Cheryll Sotheran

[1] Sotheran was born on 11 October 1945 into a large Roman Catholic family in Stratford, a farming town in New Zealand's Taranaki province.

[3] Sotheran lectured in Art History at Auckland University and while in the city, she was also a founding member of the Feminist Art Network, working with artists and curators who included Juliet Batten, Elizabeth Eastmond, Alexa Johnston, Claudia Pond Eyley, Priscilla Pitts and Carole Shepheard.

"[7] Writer Peter Ireland wrote of Sotheran’s art criticism that she had the ‘ability to sense a new direction and formulate her hunches crisply….

[16] From the beginning of her tenure Sotheran saw Te Papa as a ‘forum’ a concept that had deep roots in both Pākehā and Māori traditions.

[21] A documentary by Anna Cottrell and Gaylene Preston, Getting to Our Place, records the process of developing the museum on this new museological principle.

He considered that by calling Te Papa ‘Our Place’ the museum had opened itself up to angry criticism of the way the Catholic faith was being treated by the institution.

[25] 1989 1990 1993 1998 1999 2014 In 2023 the Dame Cheryll Sotheran Memorial Scholarship was founded for - a contribution to research and training for the next generation of museum professionals.