The Dunedin Museum of Natural Mystery

06/06/2026

I have started selling some of my original drawings from my weekly cartoon strip in the Otago Daily Times via the Otago Museum shop. Each drawing is a one-off - they are not prints.They will be for sale in the Otago Museum shop from next week. Prices range from $100-150.

04/06/2026

I have decided to stop making bone art for sale. I will continue to make the odd piece for the museum but this latest finished piece may be the last new work offered for sale. It’s ‘Blackbacked Gull Circle #7’ - sixteen Blackback skulls set in a floating circle in a wall hanging box made from recycled native timber ( flooring from an old house). Thanks are due to Eric Neuman - my faithful wood expert! Note -Blackbacked gulls are not protected). The museum will be open today from 12-5 and from 10-5 over the weekend.

04/06/2026

Martin Phillipps's own kaleidoscope on display at the museum. The museum is open this Friday (5th June) from 12-5 and over the weekend as usual from 10-5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleidoscope_World_(The_Chills_song)

01/06/2026

I sold this wall hanging sculpture to a person in Wellington at the NZ Art Fair over ten years ago. They got in touch to tell me they were moving and were going to try and sell it. The auction closes in ten days. Like a number of these round works from this period it contains a moa tibia ( the long brown bone at lower centre) and an ex medical human femur ( top left). I think this may have been the last work I made with a human bone in it.

31/05/2026

I used to teach screen printing at art schools and Polytechnics in Wellington and for most classes I would expose a random image as an example of how to create a photo-screen. I’m not sure why I chose this antique etching of an antique e***a bulb and I forgot I’d given a t-shirt to my buddy, scientist Dr Craig Hilton, with this image on. We do have a couple of antique e***a kits in the museum’s collection if you’re feeling blocked up! Note that this e***a had a bone nozzle😃

30/05/2026

I’ve met a few cardboard artists but this guy is on a whole other level -

Official Website: https://to.pbs.org/3Jhh29L | ...

28/05/2026

Working on the Martin Phillipps display in the new room at the museum. The museum is open today (Friday) from 12-5 and over the weekend from 10-5.

25/05/2026

We just had a large group of young drama students from St Hilda’s through the museum and as if often the case for school groups we didn’t charge a cent. The museum is now a registered charitable trust which is dependent on entry fees and sales and donations to stay afloat. There are no council or government subsidies as some people seem to think. We hope we can keep the lights on and the museum growing but we rely on the support of the community to do so and like many museums - we could use yours. Hopefully see you soon! (PS- I think they were talking about Kim Jong Un and the posters from North Korea😀)

25/05/2026

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21/05/2026

In the new room at the museum we have many items which belonged to Martin Phillipps (from famous Dunedin band - The Chills) which have been kindly donated by Martin’s family. One thing which is not yet on display is Martin’s can collection which was dropped off the other day. As well as collecting records, books, toys, DVDs, videos and many other things, Martin also collected cans. There are about 60 of them - many of them dating back to the seventies. I picked out these four for this photo - a classic old coke can made from thick aluminium, a can of 'Jucy Creaming Soda'( this brand actually inspired the name of a song on the final album, ‘Springboard’)- a 'Kandy' can( I remember it had a weird flavour) and finally a 'Raro' can. For a long time Raro were the local fruit juice brand and the orange flavour was ubiquitous. Personally I thought it tasted horrible! The apple flavour was much nicer but you couldn’t always get it. We hope to have some of this collection on display soon.
The museum is open today from 12-5 and over the weekend from 10-5.