Tongan Ngatu: Bark cloth community collaboration and digitisation
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The Australian Museum’s largest object, the Tongan Ngatu (Bark Cloth), was unveiled in full for the first time in 50 years on June 9, 2023 for digitisation. Originally gifted by the Tongan government at the 1973 Sydney Opera House opening, this 29m x 16m, 200kg cultural treasure has been carefully preserved in climate-controlled storage. Learn more about this major collaborative effort from the Museum’s Cultural Collections Enhancement team, digitisation, conservation, and digital teams that showcases the scale and significance of this remarkable object.
Hello. My name is Meredith Lynch Underwood, and I am the cultural collections enhancement manager at the Australian Museum. The Tongan Ngatu is the Australian Museum's largest object, at 29 by 16m and weighing in at 200kg. On Friday, 9th June 2023, a special ceremony was hosted by the Australian Museum to unveil this Tongan Ngatu for the first time in 50 years.
This Ngatu in Tongan meaning bark cloth, was gifted to the people of Australia from the Tongan government at the 1973 opening of the Sydney Opera House. This was later donated to the Australian Museum, where the piece has been housed safely in the museum's purpose built climate controlled storage ever since. In a meaningful collaboration between Australian museum teams, the Tongan Ngatu Me'a'ofa, meaning gift, saw one of the largest bark cloths in the world brought out of storage for digitization and documentation.
The unveiling of the Ngatu Me'a'ofa was inspired by the Australian Museum's ambition to enhance cultural collection, accessibility and build relationships with the Tongan government, the Tongan Royal Family and the New South Wales Tongan diaspora community as part of the Cultural Collections Enhancement. The unveiling of the Ngatu was an Australian museum collaborative project between Pasifika Cultural Collection Team, my Digitisation Team and the Conservation Department as well as the digital team.
During the unrolling ceremony attended by Her Royal Highness Princess Angelica, the Princess of Tonga, the cloth was unveiled ahead of being digitised by our team and then condition checked by the museum's conservation team. This Ngatu is just one of 9814 cultural objects that have been digitised by the Cultural Collection Enhancement Team, and just one of approximately 41,000 digital assets generated to date.
So a busy first few years for the team. And while this may be one cultural collection digitised item, the master image alone, for your information, is built of 157 images captured by drone fly over in quadrant match formation, 157 images stitched together. The result is exceptional.
