Heritage et AL

The cancellation of this year's Heritage Festival prompted a challenge from one of our hoamahi | colleagues to the other members of our Heritage teams: "I would like to celebrate the Auckland Heritage Festival by posting one of my favourite items from our collections this week, and I would like to invite you all to take part. The themes, as per the banner below, are topography, taonga and trailblazers!" This resulted in an entertaining email thread that we thought was interesting enough to be shared more widely. This is a (lightly) edited version of the emails that followed. Let us know what your selections would be! Sharon I am going for topography. My favourite is this nice bright watercolour of North Head and Rangitoto, from a painting by Mrs Caroline Harriet Abraham. Image: Caroline Abraham, North Head and Rangitoto, 1850s, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections 3-111-4. Kirsty Mine is this one of the Long Bay Motor Camp in 1959, from the North Shore collection.

For many years, Auckland Libraries has engaged with the music loving community by providing opportunities for musicians to perform at our Thursday Heritage Concerts series. At these concerts, our local musicians, and even some from overseas, have showcased their prodigious talent and highlighted a wonderful and varied musical repertoire – the vast majority of which the Library holds in our extensive music collection. We have had the joy of hearing beautiful interpretations of well loved works and had the privilege to hear lesser known works we would not have heard otherwise. One example being Purcell’s Harpsichord Master which was wonderfully presented by Peter and Katharine Watts in our concert series in 2019. Auckland Libraries holds the only extant copy of this work, first published in 1697. It was so exciting to hear it brought to life by such experts. I thought that this time in lockdown would be the perfect opportunity to reflect and take a look back on another special performanc