Nancy Adams: a Wellington botanist and artist
20 October 2025 - 22 October 2025
Region(s): Wellington
Type(s): presentations, experiences
Join curators from Te Papa’s Botany and Art teams for a free back-of-house tour of the archive of Nancy Adams.
Nancy Adams (1926–2007) was one of Aotearoa’s most notable botanists and a talented artist. As well as being a prolific botany collector, Adams drew and painted an incredible number of botanical illustrations, and wrote popular books on New Zealand seaweed, trees and flora.
Adams lived in Wellington for her whole life, and much of her work as a botanist was done here. In this back-of-house visit:
look at specimens that Adams collected in the Wellington region, alongside the artworks that she painted of local flowers and seaweeds
explore her connections to this Wellington and her important contributions to our understanding of Wellington’s plant world.
For more information and to book a place: wellingtonheritagefestival.co.nz/event/nancy-adams-a-wellington-botanist-and-artist.
This is part of the Wellington Heritage Festival.
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Explore the work of Botany and botanists. Plant specimens collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Captain Cook’s 1769 Endeavour voyage created the first physical record of New Zealand’s natural history.
Discover more about plant collections in museums in this article and in the The value of early collections.
Find out how botany curators at Te Papa collect, describe and catalogue native plants in Documenting New Zealand’s Ferns.
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