Auckland Museum hopes to be free of asbestos by the middle of next year, but the still-closed Māori and Pacific galleries won’t reopen until the end of 2029 – four years after the toxic dust was found.
Asbestos was discovered in the Grand Foyer and the adjacent Māori Court and Pacific galleries in May 2025.
The foyer reopened five months later, but work on the other wings continues.
“It is a tricky substance, and we’ve had some changes of the regulations come upon us as well which has actually lengthened the process, annoyingly,” chief executive David Reeves said.
“Under the regulations, we have to assume everything has [been contaminated], each individual item has to go through a cleaning process, and then it goes through an air-disturbance test, and it individually gets certificated as being asbestos free, even though almost all of them were asbestos free in the first place.”
Auckland Museum.
Auckland Museum
He said roughly 2100 of the wings’ 3000 artifacts had been cleaned.
Now staff were dismantling the Māori Court’s pataka, a traditional storehouse carved from totara.
“As each of the gallery spaces is cleared, then the building team move in behind,” he said.
“We have to get things like the pataka out of there because it’s in the way of the scaffolding that has to go up into the roof, so the team over the last couple of weeks have begun dismantling the pataka which is a huge job.”
Some exhibits have been cleaned and are back on display.
RNZ/ Marika Khabazi
After more than a year without a comprehensive Māori exhibit, Reeves said the museum felt like it needed to fill the void.
Last week it opened Te Ripo o te Moana, a three-year exhibition featuring many of the same objects, now asbestos-free.
“We’ve got a number of taonga that have come up out of the Māori Court, so there’ll be some familiar things people know, as well as some things that haven’t been displayed for a very, very long time,” Reeves said.
“The Māori collections are the pre-eminent collections of the museum, so we’ve been really feeling the loss. Not having a focused gallery has been a real loss, so it’s great to have it back.”
He said the decision was made to open a medium-term gallery as it became clear the asbestos remediation would drag on.
“As soon as the asbestos is all cleared – and we think that’ll be in around June next year – we need to start work on the complete renewal of the infrastructure on the ground floor there, so replacing air conditioning systems, lighting, wiring, rearranging some of the flooring and display cases, and then the team will be putting in a brand new and completely refreshed visitor experience as well,” he said.
“That, realistically, is going to take up until the centenary of the building which is at the end of 2029. We really felt we couldn’t just hold on without any sort of comprehensive Māori content for the visitors for that long.”
To aid that work, Auckland Museum was seeking additional funding from either Auckland Council or the central government.
“Those conversations are ongoing, is probably the best I can say there… We are still in conversation, but thus far we’re still having to fund it from a deficit and from deferring other projects,” Reeves said.
Auckland Council’s principal advisor for CCO governance and external partnerships, Trudi Fava, said future funding for the museum would be considered by councillors as part of the next long-term plan in 2027.
“Council is working with the museum to better understand the financial pressures it is facing and we are working collaboratively toward a good outcome for both the museum and the city, before any funding decisions are required.”