Donating to the Collection
Do you want to gift a piece of Taranaki heritage?
Are you interested in donating family or community heritage items to Puke Ariki to help us preserve, document and tell the stories of the Taranaki region and its people?
If so, the first step is to contact one of our curators to discuss your options.
The process
Accepting any item into the Heritage Collection is a long term commitment. All items are carefully assessed before a decision is made.
Information supplied by the donor contributes significantly to making that decision. The relevant curator examines the object’s possible historical, cultural, social or research potential. These criteria are considered along with any relationship the item has to existing collections, its interpretative potential and any conservation or storage requirements. All these factors are then discussed by the curatorial team and a decision to accept or decline the offer is made. Our full acquisition criteria are available on request.
Accepting or declining items
If the donation is accepted a Deed of Gift form will be prepared for the donor to sign.
This form is a legal agreement that transfers ownership and any legal rights of the donated item(s) to Puke Ariki. If an item is declined, it will be returned to the donor or dealt with according to the donor’s wishes. A copy of the Acquisition Justification form, which outlines the rationale for the decision, is available on request.
Information adds value to gifted items
Once the signed Deed of Gift forms are returned the items are catalogued into Puke Ariki’s collection management database.
The curators take great care to capture all the object’s details as this information adds important social and cultural value, placing the item in context. Catalogue information includes acquisition details, a description of the item, all its available history, any research notes and digital images
of the item (where appropriate). Capturing relevant donor details is also an important part of this process.
The item becomes part of the Puke Ariki Heritage Collection
Every effort will be made to make donated items available to the community.
Items will be publicly available online in the Heritage Collection.
Items will also be available to view in person, either by appointment with a curator or through Te Pua Wānanga o Taranaki (Taranaki Research Centre) on Level 2 of Puke Ariki’s library building. Items will also be considered for exhibitions.