Artist: Tene Waitere
Date: 1800
Museum: Museum of Ethnology Hamburg (Hamburg, Germany)
Technique: Wood
The house Rauru is one of the few Māori meeting houses found outside of New Zealand. It is unique due to its history, formal vocabulary, size, and integrity. The house can be considered as a chief ambassador of Māori culture in Europe. This kind of meeting house plays a central role in the life of the Māori as a place of encounter and an embodiment of important ancestors. The house Rauru, for example, is linked with the mythic founder of the art of wood carving and bears his name. The house comes from near the city of Rotorua in New Zealand’s Northern Island. After initial construction, believed to have begun in the mid-19th century, it remained unfinished for several decades. Not until 1900 was the house completed, on behalf of the European hotel operator Charles Nelson, who later sold it to a buyer in Europe. In 1907 it was acquired for the museum by Georg Thilenius. In 2012 the exhibition hall in which the house is located underwent fundamental remodelling, and Rauru was restored in close cooperation with specialists from New Zealand. Its reopening in October 2012 was celebrated together with representatives of the Te Arawa from Rotorua.
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