Booking the Whales | Tohorā exhibition
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> View a full walkthrough of the exhibition (pdf, 17.2 MB)
To book the exhibition, please contact:
Liz Hay
Manager Te Papa Touring
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
PO Box 467
Wellington
NEW ZEALAND
Email: lizh@tepapa.govt.nz
Phone: +64 4 381 7000
Mobile: +64 29 601 0230
More about the exhibition
Visitors will be welcomed into the underwater world of whales. They will be gently transported into the depths of the South Pacific. They will appreciate the scale, mass, and diversity of this group of mammals and will realise they are about to be part of a spectacular experience.
New Research, New Knowledge
Whales | Tohorā provides extensive intellectual appeal, satisfying and enriching visitors with a thirst for knowledge. Innovative science, unique perspectives, and distinctive cultural beliefs are bound together through superb storytelling and interactives.
Whales presents new scientific information in accessible ways. Its communication has been designed to ensure an optimum experience for children, adults, and researchers alike.
Magnificent Mammals
Visitors will be mesmerised by the scale and dynamism of whales. The skeleton of a 17.8 metre (58.4 feet) great sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) takes centre stage in the exhibition. Huge film projections and soundscapes of whales plunge the visitors into the whales’ world.
Unique Collection
Te Papa has one of the most extensive marine mammal collections in the world, including the largest collection of beaked whales, along with other unusual species such as the pygmy right whale and New Zealand’s endemic Hector’s dolphin.
All of Te Papa’s activities, including its exhibitions, are underpinned by the strengths of its expertise, scientific knowledge, mātauranga Māori (indigenous knowledge and values), museum practices, and design.
Exceptional Experience
Whales | Tohorā is a cross-disciplinary, entertaining, mass-market exhibition that will attract and stimulate family audiences around the world. Visitors will be amazed by the diversity of whales, discover the little-known whale riding traditions of the South Pacific; uncover the origins of whales and be awed by the colossal whale skeletons.
They can touch a huge whale’s tooth; become a whale for the day, clamber through a blue whale’s heart, and dive to the depths with a mighty sperm whale in the hunt for a giant squid. Whales | Tohorā: Voyage into the South Pacific is an immersive encounter with the world of whales, rich in interpretive and interactive media, in real objects, and in sound.
Exhibition Statistics
This exhibition occupies 7000 square feet (700 square metres).
A minimum stud height of 13ft 2 inches (4 metres) is required for the larger sperm whale’s skeleton.
The exhibition is modular in design.