Te Papa Museum in Wellington reaches 12 Million Visits Milestone

Te Papa – the national museum of New Zealand – has achieved the milestone of 12 million visits since opening on 14 February, 1998.

Te Papa's Chief Executive, Dr Seddon Bennington, said the milestone figure was reached late last week, after eight years of consistently high visitor numbers to the venue, on the Wellington waterfront.

Numbers have averaged around 1.3 million visitors per year. To date, 7.2 million of these visits have been made by New Zealanders and 4.8 million by people from overseas – a large number of them Australians.

Te Papa's high visitor numbers reflect its popularity and appeal to a broad audience. Visitor surveys by Te Papa show that the Museum has succeeded in attracting a broader museum audience – with younger visitors and more Mäori, Pacific Island, and male visitors – than traditionally visited museums in the past.

Satisfaction with the Te Papa experience has also remained high, with 96% of visitors reporting being satisfied with their visit in 2005/2006, and 26% giving Te Papa a rating of 10/10. 86% of New Zealand visitors to Te Papa report that they will revisit in the next 12 months, and 99% said they would recommend Te Papa to others.

In the most recent Council of Australasian Museum Directors annual survey (2004/2005), Te Papa continued to be ranked the most visited museum/gallery in Australia and New Zealand. Te Papa has held this position for the last 5 years.

“One aspect of Te Papa’s continued success is its exciting and diverse short term exhibition programme. The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy – The Exhibition has achieved over 100,000 visits in its recent second season at Te Papa, and international art shows like Constable: Impressions of Land, Sea, and Sky have wide audience appeal,” Dr Bennington said.

“Our latest permanent exhibition Blood, Earth, Fire, has also been very popular with families since opening in April.

“The upcoming Spring/Summer programme is equally diverse, featuring fashion designs in Annie Bonza: Fashion Explosion (opens 22 September), and over 300 art works from the National Collection will be displayed in Toi Te Papa – Art of the Nation (opens 25 October) showcasing a thousand years of New Zealand’s art. Egypt: Beyond the Tomb (opens 9 December) will showcase the famous collections of the National Museum of Antiquities (Leiden, The Netherlands).”

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