Wellington Museum senior curator Ian Wards is a huge Freddy\u2019s fan and jumped at the opportunity to help create the exhibition. <\/p>\n
He said the band – formed in Wellington – maintains a strong connection with the city, so the project made sense.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the late 90s, there was this really collaborative scene going on in Wellington. Rent was pretty cheap, artists could afford to be artists. And so the members of Fat Freddy\u2019s Drop kind of came together\u201d said Wards.<\/p>\n
Fat Freddy’s Drop.<\/p>\n
The group is a seven-piece band formed in 1999, having originally all been separate artists. Their unique sound quickly separated them from other bands with a combination of dub, reggae, soul, jazz, and techno.<\/p>\n
With eight studio albums, they\u2019ve picked up multiple \u2018Best Group\u2019 and \u2018Best Album\u2019 awards at the Aotearoa Music Awards.<\/p>\n
Wards believes it\u2019s a tale worth telling, and is \u201cone of the most rich, dense exhibitions we\u2019ve ever come up with\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery metre of the floor, every metre of the walls is covered in an amazing positive energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Museum registrar Nikolas Brocklehurst and senior curator Ian Wards working on the object display. Photo \/ Wellington Museum<\/p>\n
The band\u2019s been directly involved with the process themselves, providing the majority of the items on display, including artist armbands from tours, funky tracksuits and equipment from recording studios. <\/p>\n
Awards they\u2019ve picked up along the way also sit proudly on display.<\/p>\n
The exhibition\u2019s been in the works since the start of the year, and is put on for \u201cWellingtonians, visitors, people who love Freddy\u2019s, and those who want to have a good, uplifting, fun, positive experience\u201d, said Wards.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s something for everyone inside, and Wards reckons it\u2019s simply awesome.<\/p>\n
Although the band hasn\u2019t seen the finished product just yet, he hopes it\u2019ll \u201cdazzle them\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy hope and aim is that people leave with a smile on their dial, you know, that we just want to kind of put some good vibes back into Wellington.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might sort of wince a bit when they hear it, but they really are the sound of summer for so many New Zealanders. And that\u2019s because their music is positive, it\u2019s upbeat, and it just creates a good time,\u201d said Wards.<\/p>\n
The exhibition runs from Saturday, November 22 until March 8, 2026 at Wellington Museum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wellington Museum senior curator Ian Wards is a huge Freddy\u2019s fan and jumped at the opportunity to help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[308,695,34726,6326,33965,38402,156,4296,17515,31442,4522,98831,743,2944,296,700,33119,8793,111,139,69,8617,98832,88071,38291,427,52,6438,2963],"class_list":["post-147613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-actually","tag-album","tag-bands","tag-biggest","tag-designed","tag-drop","tag-entertainment","tag-exhibition","tag-experience","tag-fat","tag-feel","tag-freddys","tag-immersive","tag-inside","tag-into","tag-latest","tag-minds","tag-museums","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-offers","tag-peek","tag-sneak","tag-stepping","tag-story","tag-wellington","tag-youre","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}