Whose story is being told – and why? 4 questions museum visitors should ask themselves this school holidays

The winter school holidays will mean families across Aotearoa New Zealand will be looking for indoor activities to entertain children. With millions of visitors each year, museums focused on the country’s history will inevitably play host to local and international visitors.

Museums tend to enjoy a high level of trust among the public. They’re widely seen as neutral, factual sources of historical knowledge.

But like all forms of storytelling, museums present the past in particular ways. They narrate events from a certain group’s or individual’s perspective and explain why events unfolded in the way they did.

In this respect, museums are not so different from historical films. Consider the different ways two recent movies – 1917 and the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front – narrate the first world war.

In 1917, the storyteller takes the British side, encouraging viewers to invest in the bravery and endurance of British soldiers. But All Quiet on the Western Front is narrated from a German perspective, inviting viewers to grieve for German soldiers as victims of a political system that glorified war.

Museum exhibitions tell stories in a similar way. Visitors should be asking not just what story is told, but why.

Spoiler alert: it often has to do with national identity. Museums tell particular stories of the past because these stories support a particular image of New Zealand as a nation.

Four questions for your next museum visit

At its core, every story has two basic ingredients: actors and events. To turn these into a compelling narrative, the storyteller connects the events into a plot, so they build on each other. The storyteller also transforms actors into characters by giving them particular traits — brave, selfish, wise, cruel and the like. Museums do this, too.

As you move through a museum exhibition, try asking yourself the following questions:

1. Which historical events are included — and which are left out?

Every story begins somewhere. Museums choose which events to include and which to leave out, shaping how visitors understand what happened and why.

Take Te Papa’s Gallipoli: The Scale of Our War exhibition. It opens with the landing at ANZAC Cove but skips over events in the lead-up to WWI — such as Britain’s earlier moves to seize Ottoman territories like Cyprus and Egypt.

Leaving these out helps frame Gallipoli as a noble – albeit tragic – “coming of age” for New Zealand. But in reality, ANZAC soldiers were fighting to support Britain’s imperial ambitions in the Middle East.

2. How are events organised into a plot?

Museums don’t just say “this happened, then that happened”. They link events into a larger plot — a chain of cause and effect that explains how one thing led to another. This can happen through text, but also through spatial layout, lighting, sound and other techniques that guide visitors through rising and falling moments of narrative tension.

Often, museums use familiar plot types to connect events. One common example is the quest narrative — a story in which heroes must navigate unknown terrain, and where mistakes are part of the journey and threaten to derail the mission. It’s a bit like The Lord of the Rings: a journey full of challenges, wrong turns and personal growth.

At Te Kōngahu Museum of Waitangi, Aotearoa New Zealand’s Treaty story is told using this quest structure. The Treaty is presented as something unique and unfamiliar and the British, confronted with this unknown, fall back on familiar colonial practices — the “mistake” that led to the New Zealand wars.

Because this misstep is treated as part of the learning curve typical of any quest, the exhibition avoids harder questions about this violent part of history, and instead preserves the image of Aotearoa New Zealand as fundamentally tolerant and respectful.

3. Who are the main actors in the story — and who is missing?

Every story needs protagonists, and whose perspective frames the story matters. In many smaller regional museums, history is still told almost entirely from the viewpoint of European settlers. But what about Māori experiences of colonisation? Or the histories of Chinese communities and other migrants who arrived in the 1800s?

By focusing narrowly on European settlers as the main actors, these museums present a one-sided view of the past and construct an image of New Zealand as a European nation — one that expects others to assimilate.

4. How are the main actors characterised — and how are we meant to feel about them?

It’s not surprising that museums portray some actors positively and others less so. What’s more revealing is how certain individuals are elevated as symbols of the nation and how museums invite us to form personal connections with them.

In Te Papa’s Gallipoli exhibition, visitors can open drawers and boxes containing soldiers’ personal belongings. This intimate activity encourages us to feel close to these figures — not just learning about them, but identifying with them as embodying national qualities: bravery, resilience and a commitment to peace.

Why does this matter?

Historical museum narratives aren’t necessarily inaccurate — but, much like historical movies, they are selective. They highlight certain events, actors and cause-and-effect chains to tell a particular kind of story. Often, that story supports a specific idea of what it means to be an Aotearoa New Zealander.

By reading museum exhibitions with a critical eye, visitors can better understand not just the past, but how storytelling shapes national identity in the present — and imagine how it might be shaped differently.