1 Tennyson Street, Napier (Marine Parade waterfront, opposite the Napier Soundshell)
[email protected]
+64 6 835 7781
Daily except Christmas Day. Verify current hours at mtghawkesbay.com before booking.
Free entry to permanent collection. ELC-funded education programmes have a per-student charge. Verify current costs with the education team at time of booking.
Central Napier. Street parking on Marine Parade. Coach drop-off on Tennyson Street. Walking distance from central Napier schools.
Book directly with the MTG education team. Self-guided visits are available; educator-led programmes require advance booking. Programmes can be tailored to your teaching focus.
MTG offers educator-led programmes, self-guided visits, and tailored sessions. All programmes below are delivered at the museum. Contact the education team to discuss which programme best fits your class and curriculum focus.
Thomas's story of the 3 February 1931 earthquake is told using a Kamishibai story theatre box, followed by a visit to the earthquake gallery. Students examine real objects from the disaster. A foundational introduction to the 1931 event for junior and middle school students.
Students travel back in time to report live from Napier moments before and after the earthquake. Using green screen technology and archive material, teams research, script, and record eyewitness news reports from the day. Combines historical inquiry with media production.
A 1.5-hour programme using the Shockwave exhibition and primary source material. Students examine geological context, primary source evidence, and kotahitanga — the collective action required to rebuild communities and infrastructure. Includes an outdoor component.
Students explore a range of early Māori tools, then try technologies: extracting muka from harakeke, weaving, using a tuwiri, and designing on Tinkercad. Concludes with a visit to the Kuru Taonga gallery. Links traditional and contemporary technological thinking.
A walking tour of Napier's CBD explores the Art Deco architecture that rose from the 1931 earthquake, followed by a workshop to create Art Deco-inspired designs. Connects historical event to architectural and design response. Verify current availability with the education team.
The MTG Education Suite is transformed into a whare tapere. Students listen to pūrākau and engage with Matariki traditions in an immersive setting. Seasonal programme — contact the education team for scheduling.
MTG holds a nationally significant collection across three interconnected buildings. The encounters below are consistent across most visits — specific programmes build on them differently depending on year level and curriculum focus.
The rebuilt earthquake exhibition opens with Rūaumoko, god of earthquakes, told by kaumatua Matt Eru. Students move through the story of the 7.8 magnitude event, examine archive photographs and personal artefacts, and enter the shake house — a reconstructed 1931 cottage in which a simulated earthquake experience gives a physical sense of the event's power. The memorial area acknowledges the 256 lives lost.
The permanent Māori gallery presents the history of Ngāti Kahungunu and the shaping of Te Matau-a-Māui through taonga, oral histories, and iwi narratives. Approximately 60% of the Taonga Māori collection is directly linked to Ngāti Kahungunu. Students encounter real taonga in a gallery designed in partnership with iwi, with tikanga and te reo Māori embedded throughout.
The MTG buildings include an Art Deco wing that is itself a curriculum resource. Students encounter the design philosophy that shaped Napier's rebuilding after 1931, from the museum's own structure to artefacts, photographs, and decorative objects from the period. Napier's CBD, a short walk away, extends the encounter into the built environment.
Changing exhibitions feature New Zealand and Hawke's Bay artists, including significant works with Ngāti Kahungunu connections. The gallery provides context for conversations about how artists respond to place, history, and identity — directly relevant to The Arts and Social Studies at senior levels.
Depending on the programme, students may encounter photographs, documents, newspaper clippings, and personal records from the earthquake and from the region's broader history. Handling or closely examining primary sources is a distinct encounter unavailable in any classroom.
MTG is an experienced school visit destination with a professional education team. These notes supplement the museum's own briefing materials.
ELC-funded educator-led programmes are in demand. Contact the MTG education team as early as possible, especially for Term 2 Matariki programming and for secondary groups targeting NCEA achievement standards.
MTG can tailor sessions to your teaching focus. Knowing whether your priority is the historical event, the Ngāti Kahungunu stories, the Art Deco design response, or primary source research will help the education team build the right visit for your class.
The simulated earthquake experience in Shockwave is immersive and realistic. For students with anxiety around loud noise, sudden movement, or confined spaces, preview the experience description with them before the visit. The education team can advise on what to expect.
Even if your programme focus is the earthquake, the Kuru Taonga gallery repays additional time. The taonga and iwi narratives are relevant across Social Studies, History, and Tikanga, and many students encounter Ngāti Kahungunu stories here that they do not encounter at school.
The MTG building itself, and the blocks immediately surrounding it on Marine Parade and Tennyson Street, are curriculum resources. Ten minutes of deliberate looking before entering or after leaving extends the encounter into the built environment at no extra cost.
Students who arrive with a question — "what did people do in the first hour after the earthquake?" or "what does this taonga tell you about the person it belonged to?" — engage more deeply with every encounter. Brief, open-ended observation prompts are more effective than worksheets for most year levels.
These prompts build on what students saw, heard, and experienced at MTG. The most effective prompts begin with something specific from the visit: an object, a moment in the shake house, a taonga in the Kuru Taonga gallery, or an Art Deco detail from the street. The richer the starting point the student brings, the more the AI response can be interrogated against what they actually encountered.
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "Tell me about the 1931 Hawke's Bay earthquake." Read the answer. What did you see at MTG that the AI did not mention? What did the shake house show you that words alone cannot?
Choose one object from the Kuru Taonga gallery. Describe it to a gen AI chatbot and ask: "What do you think this object was used for?" Compare its answer with what the gallery told you. Did the AI get it right?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "Why is Napier an Art Deco city?" Then look at a photograph you took or a memory from the visit. Does the AI's explanation match what you saw? What does the AI leave out?
Tell a gen AI chatbot: "After the 1931 earthquake, people in Napier had to rebuild the city very quickly. What decisions would have been hardest to make?" Share its answer and your own. Do you agree?
Ask a gen AI chatbot to describe what happened in Napier on 3 February 1931. Identify three specific claims it makes. For each claim, note whether the MTG exhibition confirmed it, complicated it, or contradicted it. What does the gap reveal about how the AI generated its account?
The MTG programme uses the concept of kotahitanga — collective action — to describe how communities rebuilt after 1931. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What does kotahitanga mean, and how has it been expressed in Ngāti Kahungunu history?" Then compare its answer with what the Kuru Taonga gallery showed you.
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How did the Art Deco movement shape the rebuilding of Napier after 1931, and why was it chosen?" Then walk through your memory of the building and the street. Where does the AI's explanation hold up, and where does the actual architecture tell a different or more complex story?
In the Kuru Taonga gallery and the earthquake exhibition, MTG makes specific choices about whose stories are centred and how they are told. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How do museums decide which stories to tell and which voices to include?" What would you add or change at MTG based on what you saw?
Select one primary source you encountered at MTG — a photograph, newspaper report, personal account, or taonga. Ask a gen AI chatbot to describe the same event or object from its training data. Write a structured comparison: where does the AI account align with the primary source, where does it diverge, and what does that divergence reveal about the limits of language model training data for historical inquiry?
Ask a gen AI chatbot to explain the political and social responses to the 1931 earthquake: what decisions were made, by whom, and with what long-term consequences for Napier and Hawke's Bay. Evaluate the response against what the MTG exhibition presented. Where does the AI flatten complexity or omit Māori perspectives that the museum foregrounded?
Select one taonga from the Kuru Taonga gallery. Use a gen AI chatbot as a thinking partner to build an argument for why this object constitutes historical evidence. Then write a reflection: what can you claim from direct encounter with the taonga that you could not claim from a photograph of it, and what can you claim from a photograph that you could not claim from the AI's description?
MTG has made curatorial choices about how the 1931 earthquake and Ngāti Kahungunu history are presented. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What ethical responsibilities does a regional museum have when curating exhibitions about disaster, colonisation, and indigenous history?" Then evaluate how well MTG meets those responsibilities based on what you observed. Where does it succeed and where might it do more?
| Level | Years 0–6 | Years 7–10 | Years 11–13 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Student names at least one thing they saw, heard, or experienced at MTG and can place it in the context of the visit: the earthquake, the taonga, the Art Deco buildings, or the shake house experience. | Student identifies specific encounters from the visit — a programme activity, an object in the collection, a moment in the exhibition — and connects each to a curriculum concept: historical cause, cultural identity, or design response. | Student identifies and records specific primary sources encountered at MTG, notes the context in which each was presented, and begins connecting them to relevant NCEA achievement standard requirements. |
| 2 | Student makes a claim about what the visit showed them that they did not know before. Can explain the claim in their own words with reference to something specific from the exhibition or programme: "The shake house showed me that..." or "The taonga told me that..." | Student constructs a causal or interpretive account using evidence from the visit: connecting the geological event to the design response, or connecting taonga to iwi history and contemporary identity. Account goes beyond description to interpretation. | Student uses primary source material from the visit to support a sustained historical or analytical argument. Identifies where the source confirms, complicates, or contradicts other accounts including the gen AI chatbot's account of the same event or object. |
| 3 | Student compares what a gen AI chatbot said about the earthquake, a taonga, or Art Deco with what the MTG exhibition showed them. Can explain in simple terms why the two accounts are different and which one they trust more for a specific question. | Student documents a comparison between the gen AI account and the MTG encounter for at least one specific topic. Identifies where the AI account aligns and where it diverges, and explains what the divergence reveals about the limits of AI-generated historical explanation. | Student produces a structured analysis of the gap between gen AI-generated historical explanation and primary source encounter, identifying the epistemological difference between language model output and direct engagement with archival or material evidence. |
| 4 | Student explains what being at MTG added that a video, a book, or an AI answer could not. Can name one specific sensory or emotional detail from the visit: the scale of the photographs, the feel of the shake house, the presence of real taonga in the room. | Student articulates why the direct encounter with primary sources, taonga, and immersive exhibition design matters for the quality of a historical claim. Explains what "being in the room with the evidence" provides that secondary sources and AI-generated accounts cannot replicate. | Student reflects on the epistemological weight of direct encounter with material evidence in historical and cultural inquiry: what physical presence with primary sources allows the inquirer to claim, and what obligations that encounter creates for accurate and respectful representation. |
| 5 | Student generates one question from the visit that they want to keep investigating: something they saw that they do not yet understand, or something the exhibition raised that the programme did not resolve. Can say where they would look for an answer. | Student formulates an inquiry question from the visit that is answerable through further research, specifies at least two sources they would use (one of which is not a gen AI chatbot), and explains what a satisfying answer would need to demonstrate. | Student designs a research or creative project anchored in the MTG visit: specifies the inquiry question, the evidence base including any primary sources accessible through MTG or its archive, the method of analysis, and the form the final work will take — connected to relevant NCEA achievement standards where applicable. |