It is unique amongst Pacific national cultural institutions for rejecting many aspects of European museology, and creating new ways of working which value kastom practices.

[2] The museum runs a Kastom School where traditional arts and stories are passed on to young people from Vanuatu.

[2] The National Museum of Vanuatu has a collection that includes archaeological and ethnographic objects, as well as biological and geological specimens, from the country.

[1] The collection includes: masks,[8] slit gongs, model canoes, pottery, animal and birds specimens from each island, as well as archaeological archives relating to the material culture of the first inhabitants.

[10] Another photographic archive records the tradition of sand drawing from the islands, which appears on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

[3] During the 1970s, at the same time as the museum was starting its oral collecting programme, the independence movement in Vanuatu was developing, following the establishment of the Vanua'aku Pati in 1971.

[3] In 1994 the museum began a long-term partnership with the Australian National University in order to co-operate to solve some of the gaps in the ni-Vanuatu archaeological record.

For the ni-Vanuatu who visit, objects are inextricably linked to social networks and the museum has worked hard with communities and researchers across the islands to record these connections and their significance.

[2] Kirk Huffman emphasised the importance of the "unique, quasi-spiritual" operations of the museum: "There is much in Vanuatu's cultures that is tabu, that the outside world does not need to know, nor have the right to know, and these restrictions must be respected.

[2] However, much missionary material culture that relates to Vanuatu is held in overseas collections, particularly in countries connected to Scottish Presbyterianism.

[19] Since 1997 the original owners of the Lengnangulong sacred stone, which is from the village of Magam on North Ambryn, have requested either the repatriation of the object or formal acknowledgement of their ownership from the Louvre.

Whilst the original is in Paris, in the Pavillon des Sessions of the Musée du Louvre, a copy of the stone is displayed at the National Museum of Vanuatu.