Queen’s Birthday honours: congratulations to Maureen Lander

Wonderful to see leading fibre artist and longtime CTANZ member Dr Maureen Lander awarded MNZM in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.

LANDER, Dr Maureen Robin

For services to Māori art

Dr Maureen Lander is a leading exponent of raranga (weaving) and installation art.

Dr Lander began learning whatu kākahu (cloak-making) skills from Diggeress Te Kanawa in 1984 and started exhibiting her work in 1986. Her works have been shown in key exhibitions in New Zealand and overseas including ‘Pu Manawa’ at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 1993 and ‘Pasifika Styles’ in 2006 at the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Her exhibition ‘Flat-Pack Whakapapa’, organised by the Dowse Art Museum in 2017, is currently touring nationally. She was Senior Lecturer in Māori Material Culture at the University of Auckland’s Māori Studies Department and has continued to mentor aspiring Māori artists and kairaranga (weavers) after retiring from university lecturing in 2007. In 2002 Dr Lander gained a doctorate in Fine Arts from Auckland University, the first person of Māori descent to gain a doctorate in Fine Arts from a New Zealand university.