Jonathan Mane-Wheoki

Jonathan Ngarimu Mane-Wheoki (8 December 1943 – 10 October 2014) was a New Zealand art historian, academic, and curator. He was a pioneer in the study of contemporary Māori and Pacific art history.

Biography Of Ngāpuhi, Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kurī and English descent, and grew up in the Hokianga.

Between 1966 and 1971 Mane-Wheoki studied at the University of Canterbury, where Rudolf Gopas was an important influence on him. He completed his Diploma in Fine Arts (Hons) in 1969, followed by a BA in English. His 1969 Honours thesis was titled The musical phase of modern painting. He worked for the Robert McDougall Art Gallery before travelling to the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where he gained an M.A. in Art History focusing on Ecclesiology, Colonial Ecclesiology, and Religious Art in France. His M.A. report was titled Polychromatic Elements in High Victorian Church Architecture. While in London, he began studying for a PhD under an Arts Council NZ scholarship.

He returned to New Zealand to begin his academic career at the University of Canterbury in 1975, rising to become dean of music and fine arts. and in 2009 he was appointed professor of fine arts and head of the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. He stepped down as the head of Elam in 2012,

Honours and awards In 2008, Mane-Wheoki was awarded an honorary LittD by the University of Canterbury. He received the Pou Aronui Award from the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2012, for outstanding contribution in the development of the humanities in Aotearoa New Zealand. In the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours he was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the arts.

The 2025 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Illustrated non-fiction was won by Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art, on which Mane-Wheoki had worked with co-authors Deidre Brown and Ngarino Ellis before his death.

Death He died in Auckland on 10 October 2014 after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer, having recently visited the Hokianga to see where he would be buried, and said he was prepared to die. "I am relaxed about it, what else can I be?" He died a month after his investiture ceremony at Government House as a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.