The need for better display conditions and extra space necessitated a move from the Princes Street site, and eventually the project for a purpose-built museum was merged with the idea of creating a memorial to commemorate soldiers lost in the First World War.

After extensive consultation between the Mayor, Sir James Gunson and Thomas Cheeseman, the site chosen was a hill in the Government Domain commanding an impressive view of the Waitematā Harbour.

Likewise the exterior bas-reliefs, carved by Richard Gross (1882 – 1964) and depicting 20th-century armed forces and personnel, are in a style which mixes Neo-Grec with Art Deco.

The quotation over the front porch—which begins "THE WHOLE EARTH IS THE SEPULCHRE OF FAMOUS MEN"—is attributed to the Greek statesman Pericles; its appearance is in keeping with the museum's status as a war memorial.

Two additions were made to the original building, the first in the late 1950s to commemorate the Second World War when an administration annexe with a large semi-circular courtyard was added to the southern rear.

The second stage of this restoration has seen a great dome and atrium constructed within the central courtyard, increasing the building's floor area by 60 per cent (an addition of 9,600 m2 (103,000 sq ft))[33] at a cost of NZ$64.5 million.

The copper and glass dome, as well as the viewing platform and event centre underneath it, had been criticised by some as "resembling a collapsed soufflé", but quickly won the admiration of critics and public, being noted for "its undulating lines, which echo the volcanic landscape and hills around Auckland".

[35] In June 2007, the Grand Atrium project also received the Supreme Award of the New Zealand Property Council, which noted it as being "world-class", and a successful exercise in combining complex design and heritage demands.

[47] Auckland Museum's collections are organised into three principal areas: documentary heritage (manuscripts, correspondence and other historical documents in archives, along with pictorial art); the major branches of the natural sciences; and human history (broadly, material culture).

[49][50] The museum's nationally and internationally significant Documentary Heritage collections comprise manuscripts, ephemera, maps, charts and plans, newspapers and periodicals, rare and contemporary books and pamphlets, photographs, and works of art in the form of paintings, bookplates, and sketches and drawings.

Among the areas of significant focus are Māori and Pacific cultures,[51] the human and natural history of the Greater Auckland region, New Zealanders' involvement in global conflicts, and exploration and discovery.

[52] The museum holds the only known extant copy of A Korao no New Zealand, the first book written in the Māori language, published at Sydney in 1815 by the missionary Thomas Kendall.

[55] These provide fascinating insights into the lives of both pioneering and contemporary women, and are described in the museum publication Womanscripts, compiled by Sue Loughlin and Carolyn Morris (1995).

Most of these are recorded in Jenifer Curnow's 1995 book Ngā Pou Ārahi,[66] a tribal inventory relating to Māori treasures, language, genealogy, songs, history, customs and proverbs.

The museum's natural sciences collections are principally a research and reference assemblage that provides information on the distribution and morphology of plant, animal and mineral species in New Zealand and the regional Pacific.

The museum stores and exhibits 1.5 million natural history specimens from the fields of botany, entomology, geology, land vertebrates and marine biology.

It is part of a national and international network and aims to contain a comprehensive reference collection of all insect types as well as other terrestrial and freshwater invertebrates (worms, spiders, millipedes and centipedes, some isopods and amphipods) from the New Zealand region.

Its importance lies in the ability to support research into the biodiversity of New Zealand's terrestrial invertebrates (particularly beetles, moths and parasitic wasps), and their contribution to complex ecologies.

[82] The collection is particularly strong in kiwi and moa, oceanic seabirds, penguins, cormorants, ducks, waders and allies (Charadriiformes), passerine birds, tuatara, geckos, skinks, Pacific reptiles and New Zealand bats.

The items in the collection "range over every imaginable un-powered device capable of producing music", and includes "workable examples of every member of the violin family, as well as didgeridoos, a zuffolo, harpsichords, a crwth, harps, tablas, a sáhn, horns, trumpets, clarinets, [and] a hurdy-gurdy".

[92] The collection dates from the early decades of the founding of the museum; its focus has been on acquiring first-quality 'masterworks' from all tribal and geographic areas of New Zealand, as well as representative material-culture items.

[92] The collection is diverse both geographically and in type of material, covering all the cultures of the Pacific, from West Papua, north-east to Hawaii and south-east to Easter Island.

Objects are collected for their intrinsic cultural or artistic importance, and also for their place within a temporal or geographic range by virtue of the relevance of their maker, who may be anonymous.

[97] This exhibition is linked to the War Memorial, and shows, for example, models of Māori pā (fortified settlements) and original Spitfire[98] and Mitsubishi Zero[99] aeroplanes.

There are two "Halls of Memory" within the museum, whose walls, together with a number of additional marble slabs, list the names of all known New Zealand soldiers from the Auckland Region killed in major conflicts during the 20th century.

The city has however conducted substantial remedial works, to improve the condition of the existing Court of Honour, including repairs to and lighting of the steps, uplighting of the Cenotaph, as well as general cleaning and a new interpretive engraving provided by the Auckland RSA.

[109] The board's duties, functions and powers, and its responsibilities to ten statutory objectives are set out in the Auckland War Memorial Museum Act 1996.

[5] The appointment and activities of Vanda Vitali, a Canadian citizen who served as director from 2007 until her resignation in 2010, saw a number of highly disputed changes in the museum, with numerous staff members being made redundant, or having to reapply for their positions.

[127] Vitali was roundly criticised for many of her actions by a number of former staff and public figures, such as editorialist Pat Booth, who accused her of downplaying the "War Memorial" element of the museum name and function,[127] as well as by former finance head of the museum, Jon Cowan, who in a letter to the New Zealand Herald argued after her resignation that she was responsible for a significant fall in visitor numbers and visitor satisfaction during her tenure.

Te Papa refers to Papatuanuku, the earth mother, the place where all people will be ultimately buried (in this context, in war cemeteries here or abroad).