New Plymouth museum and art gallery opens with Mayflower and mammoths

Exhibition at the Box looks back 400 years to the settlers' voyage to America and its effect on the indigenous people

One of the galleries features both a full-scale model of a woolly mammoth and a collection of tiny sea creatures pickled in jars that look more like an installation by Damien Hirst than a city museum exhibit.

A second is dominated by a replica of the Mayflower, the ship that sailed from the UK to what is now the US exactly 400 years ago, but also highlights precious artefacts and images that tell the story of the indigenous people who suffered in the decades following the ship's landing.