Our museum and education centre
Our museum, located in the foyer of our building in Wellington, provides a glimpse into New Zealand's economic and banking heritage. The museum is currently open for school visits by appointment but not the general public.
Visiting the museum
The museum in our foyer is open for school visits by arrangement. Send your enquiries or booking requests to [email protected].
About the museum
The museum celebrates and tells the story of our foundation and role as New Zealand's central bank.
It is the only specialist economic and central banking museum in New Zealand, designed to educate and inform, highlighting and celebrating New Zealand’s wider economic and banking history.
It includes an extensive range of exhibits showing the history of the banking system as well as a selection of rare notes and coins from our numismatic collection.
Read more about our museum's history and collections
One of the most popular exhibits in the museum is the Moniac, an amazing hydro-mechanical economic computer created by pioneering New Zealand economist Bill Phillips. While it is currently not operating, you can watch it in action in this video: 'Making money flow: the Moniac'.
Read about Bill Phillips and the MONIAC
About school visits
Students visiting the museum will be given a 45 to 90-minute presentation by a member of our staff and hear about a range of topics including:
- Kaitiakitanga: The Reserve Bank of New Zealand – Te Pūtea Matua (our role in society, overview of what we do and how we do it)
- monetary policy and economics in practice.
Older students may get more out of the content, but younger students are also welcome.
Our museum and education centre is a shared space also used for media conferences and other ad hoc events. We will do our best to avoid a conflict of bookings, but if we need the museum space for an urgent media conference, we will have to rebook your visit. We will let you know as soon as possible if this happens. For this reason, when requesting a visit, please suggest an alternative date so we can rebook your visit immediately.
How schools can register interest
Express your interest by contacting [email protected] with the following information:
- preferred starting time
- school year (age) of the students
- number of students and teachers visiting
- two contact names with the email addresses and mobile numbers for the school representatives organising the visit
- any particular questions the students wish to have answered during their visit.
Contact us
For more information and enquiries about the museum email [email protected]