Welcome to Friends of Pātaka

Friends of Pātaka is a group of enthusiasts who simply love Pātaka Art + Museum!

We aim to stimulate and sustain interest in Pātaka Art + Museum throughout the Porirua community and beyond. Through newsletters, Facebook posts and emails, we keep our Friends up to date with Pataka’s exhibitions and openings, curator and artist talks and our own events, as well as those in our region that might interest our members. 

We currently have around 250 members. A big drawcard for membership is that we receive a 10% DISCOUNT for any purchase at Pātaka’s TOI STORE. Many Friends find their $25 membership fee is paid for by these discounts alone well before the year is out! And you’ll be supporting local artists and makers.

There is also a Friends coffee card for Café Kaizen – every sixth cup free. Coffee cards are available from the front desk.

Friends of Pātaka offers help with hosting openings and artists talks, and assisting on the gallery floor when required. We also support Pātaka Art + Museum and the local artistic community by organising our own initiatives, including:

• ANNUAL WINTER MUSIC SERIES  – A highly successful series of one-hour Sunday concerts in a wide variety of musical genres, free to Friends and extremely popular with both them and the general public.
• BIENNIAL ART AWARDS – Open to all artists with a connection to Porirua, this initiative offers a range of prizes – winning the main award has given artists the boost in confidence to go on to full- or part-time artistic practice.
• Other free events, floor talks with interesting speakers and visits to places of artistic interest.

We also provide infrastructure support such as the purchase of portable seating, a PA system and the David Trubridge light fitting over the reception desk. We also support artistic endeavours, such as help with funding the books Sandy Adsett Toi Koru and Ka mua, ka muri: looking back, moving forward, which marked Pātaka’s 25th anniversary, and much more.

On our Facebook page we post about our events, Friends news, concerts in our winter music series, etc. and we share posts about shows, events or talks at Pātaka and other regional galleries, of interest to members.