Canterbury Museum

Canterbury Museum's Rolleston Avenue site is undergoing a major 5-year redevelopment. While we are out of the building we have opened a pop-up Museum at 66 Gloucester Street in central Christchurch.

Around half of the Canterbury Museum at CoCA pop-up is dedicated to collection highlights and visitor favourites from the Museum collection, including a small selection from the 7,000 objects in the Antarctic Collection.

Visitors can ride an Antarctic skidoo, see reindeer hide boots used in the Discovery Expedition (1901–1904), a sled used in Roald Amundsen’s Fram Expedition (1910–1912) – the first to reach the South Pole – and Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Polar Medal.

During the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, people flocked to Lyttelton to see off south- bound expeditions and welcomed them back as heroes. The Museum was the grateful recipient of many objects and souvenirs brought back from the ice.

The Museum continues to grow the Antarctic Collection and many more objects will be displayed in an enlarged Antarctic Gallery in the new Museum when it opens towards the end of 2028.