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Situated on the edge of Queens Park, the Southland Museum and Art Gallery building is the largest pyramid in the southern hemisphere. Inside there is 500 million years of Southland’s natural history and 800 years of its human history.

Three art galleries feature changing displays of local, national and international art, from historical to contemporary. The Subantartic Islands come to life in the gallery entitled ‘Beyond the Roaring 40’s. This two part exhibitions also features the exciting ‘Audio Visual Experience’. An historical exhibition spanning several galleries richly portrays our past. It includes superb treasures from our Maori prehistory.

The majority of Maori artefacts in the museum’s research collection and also displayed in its Maori Gallery are from the original people of the very earliest prehistoric period of southern New Zealand (an ancient culture-area known as Murihiku).

In the late 1880's the Museum was part of the Invercargill Athenaeum (library) and early records show that a tuatara roamed the shelves as a live exhibit for several years. In 1974 the first outdoor "tuatarium" as we called it, was built at the Museum. With the redevelopment of the Museum in 1990 a much larger tuatarium was constructed to cater for the rapidly growing population. Today the museum is home to 50 live Tuatara.

The Southland Museum and Art Gallery is open every day, excluding Christmas Day. Museum hours are weekdays 9.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m. and weekends and public holidays 10.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m. There is no admission fee to the Southland Museum and Art Gallery.

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