Huhana Smith
Huhana Smith, born Susan Margaret Smith in 1962 in Yarrawonga, Victoria, Australia, is a New Zealand artist and academic. A painter and educator, she is the head of the Whiti o Rehua School of Art at Massey University in Wellington. She is of Māori descent and affiliates with Ngāti Tukorehe and Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga.
Smith began her art practice in Melbourne in the late 1980s and moved to New Zealand in 1993 to study Māori language. She became the first graduate of Massey University’s Toioho ki Āpiti Bachelor of Māori Visual Arts in 1997, and later earned a Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Studies (1998) and a PhD in Māori Studies.
From 2003 to 2009 she was senior curator Māori at Te Papa, where she edited books on Māori arts and highlighted many contemporary artists, and helped care for taonga (ancestral treasures). In 2016 she became head of the Whiti o Rehua School of Arts at Massey University.
Her current research blends mātauranga Māori with science to address climate change for coastal Māori lands in the Horowhenua-Kāpiti region, funded by Vision Mātauranga and the Deep South Challenge. This work was shown at the Dowse Art Museum in 2017. She was a finalist in the Art Waikato National Art Awards in 2000 and 2002. In 2023, she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the environment.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 20:39 (CET).