The Christchurch Street is one of our most beloved exhibitions. Visitors are always relieved when they hear it will return in the new Museum.
Before then, though, we will carefully dismantle it and take it offsite while construction is underway. In early January, we started by packing up all the objects in the shops.
Most of the items in shops aren't replicas; they're actual historic taonga (treasures) that have been donated to the Museum over many years. We had to be very careful when handling these objects.
However, we also had to be quick. The Christchurch Street needed to be empty in time for SHIFT: Urban Art Takeover, which opened on 28 January.
The Christchurch Street in its current iteration opened in 1999. Although all the businesses really existed, it doesn't represent a particular street, instead trying to evoke the general feel of Ōtautahi Christchurch in the late nineteenth century.
Chris Hoopmann is Collections Inventory Digitisation Technician
