NZ-89985

Lois sent me an Auckland card with the War Memorial Museum, one of New Zealand's most important museums and war memorials. 

Inaugurated in November 28th, 1929, the museum is one of the most iconic Auckland buildings, constructed in the neo-classicist style, and sitting on a grassed plinth (the remains of a dormant volcano) in the Auckland Domain, a large public park close to the Auckland CBD.

© Scenix Marketing, Auckland

NZ-89985, sent by Lois. 

The museum houses a large collection of Māori and Pacific Island artefacts and treasures, including for example three entire buildings, including Hotunui, a large carved meeting house built in 1878 at Thames, and Te Toki a Tapiri, a waka taua (war canoe) from 1830. 

The museum also stores a photographic collection of 1.2 million images, and stores and exhibits 1.5 million natural history specimens from the fields of botany, entomology, geology, land vertebrates and marine biology. The stated goal is to eventually possess specimens from all New Zealand species.

There is also an extensive permanent exhibition covering wars, both within New Zealand and New Zealand's participation in overseas conflicts. This exhibition is linked to the War Memorial, and for example shows models of Maori pas (earth fortifications) and original Spitfire and Mitsubishi Zero aeroplanes. The Museum holds the largest collection of applied and decorative arts in New Zealand and selections are currently displayed in the Landmarks and Encounters Galleries.

Parts of the museum, as well as the Cenotaph and its surrounding consecrated grounds (Court of Honour) in front of the Museum, also serve as a war memorial, mainly to those who lost their lives in the First and Second World Wars. There are two 'Halls of Memory' within the museum, whose walls, together with a number of additional marble slabs, list the names of all known New Zealand soldiers from the Auckland Region killed in major conflicts during the 20th Century. - in: wikipedia