Megan Tamati-Quennell

Megan Tamati-Quennell is a leading curator and writer of modern and contemporary Māori and Indigenous art. She has more than 30 years of art curatorial experience, beginning her career at the National Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand in 1991. She currently holds two art curatorial positions: Associate Indigenous Curator, Contemporary Art | Kairauhī Taketake Toi Onāianei, Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth as well as curator, modern and contemporary Maori and Indigenous art, Te Papa in Wellington, which is New Zealand’s pre-eminent institution and holds the national art collection. Tamati-Quennell is of Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mūtunga, Ngāi Tahu and Kāti Māmoe, Māori descent.

Her research interests include contemporary Māori art, Māori modernism, Māori women artists of the 1930s until today, Māori abstraction and conceptual art, International First Nations art, the intersection between First Nations art and the art mainstream and First Nations art curatorial praxis.

Her curatorial projects include Swallowing Geography, Brewster Art Gallery (2021–2022) and There is no before, Govett Brewster Art Gallery (2021), the first solo exhibition by Indigenous Australian artist Dale Harding in New Zealand.

Tamati Quennell is the co-editor of Becoming Our Future: Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice (ARP Books, 2020), which reflects on international indigenous methodologies in curatorial practice from the geographic spaces of Canada, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia to assert specific cultural knowledges, protocols and relationships.

Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, Megan lives and works in Wellington, New Zealand.