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By Mark Amery

After years of moaning about institutions' penchant for big, long-running, unsurprising exhibitions it's a pleasure to note that finally, as Len Lye might have said, things are really jumping.

As well as Lye, City Gallery has the sensual and surreal poppy jam that is the Chicks on Speed and Lisa Walker collaboration upstairs, and downstairs a monthly changing exhibition of Asian video art that has the mood of a cool cocktail bar, but more fun. 

The biggest surprise however awaits at Te Papa, where the recent rehang of the national art collection and redesign of the fifth floor answers the complaints many of us have had for far too long.

Yes, there's more of the collection on display. And promised to come an impressive expansion for it, from 2000 to 8000 square metres utilising other space in the building. Te Papa have also responded to the call for the hang to change more often. Yet what really impresses about Nga Toi is the way it is hung, and how a spatial redesign has increased the brightness and flow of our experience. What felt like an attic of dead-ends feels now like a living space of many chambers and vistas. Both visitors and the art can breathe more and talk more amongst themselves.

There is that fine museum pleasure of turning a corner and being surprised by what you haven't yet seen - the feeling you'll want to come back to take sections in again. Te Papa have moved from a conventional chronological hang to a varied set of mini-shows based around interesting themes (with excellent accompanying essays). Some are devoted to suites of work by major artists - a dynamic Gordon Walters' koru series hang, or Rita Angus and Leo Benseman's conversation through portraiture - but there is also some historical re-evaluation. I loved the section devoted to expatriate New Zealand artists, with arresting work by the seldom seen likes of Edward Bullmore and some crackling late work by Frances Hodgkins. Talking elegantly amongst themselves, there's an intimate room of some of the greats of international 20th century photography. Another nice change is to see Te Papa's collection of Aboriginal art, with a particularly strong thread through of indigenous women artists, from Emily Kngwarreye to Destiny Deacon. 

Connections are often visceral and fresh, recognising art as a conversation across borders. I love how the blue bottle ocean of a John Drawbridge sparks off an impressive cliff and ocean landscape by Australian Sidney Nolan opposite. There is an energy and play - photographer Yvonne Todd's women pose for us at the entrance, like gormless gallery hostesses. There's the sense of historical narratives being loosened to allow new journeys to be mapped.

Much of this work hasn't been on display for a long time. Its like attending a party and making a swag of new friends. In a smart Maori modernism section I meet Buster Black, a friend of McCahon's. His Black Mountain painting uses sand and paint to create these stunning John Walsh-like black volcanic rock washes of midnight blacks, topped by a hood of crisp white snow. Generally our sense of connection to the land comes out strongly throughout the whole exhibition.

It doesn't all work. The Home, Land and Sea section is a little too general in its scope, really singing when it presents work around the interaction between industry, national interests and the Pacific Islands. Meanwhile, commissioning contemporary artists to respond to the collection is a nice touch, but the posters by Andrew McLeod play like album cover art - all noisy cut and paste post-modernism with little actual meaning or effect.

Generally though Nga Toi refocusses the entire space effectively around the national collection. It's working effectively to give our art history contemporary currency.

• Nga Toi Arts Te Papa, Te Papa Tongarewa, ongoing          

MUST SEE

Blue Moon, Mary McFarlane, The Diversion Gallery, until 4 May

A must see if travelling by ferry is Barbara Speedy's Diversion Gallery in Picton, currently showing a moody, magisterial series of circular mirror moon works by McFarlane.