Heritage et AL

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Artist files: rare and rich glimpses into Aotearoa's art history.

By Auckland Libraries - November 03, 2023

Image: Angela Morton Room artist files. Writer Peter Shaw has called artist files an essential part of our sense of history. "What were the things that reviewers were looking for at a particular time? What was the context in which the works were produced? These are endlessly fascinating questions, and unless you have artist files carefully collected and organized by someone you lose all of that."* Over 700 files for individual Aotearoa artists are held in Takapuna’s Angela Morton Room Te Pātaka Toi Art Library. These can include exhibition catalogues, small printed artworks, posters, CV’s, reviews and interviews. The bulk of the material was collected from 1980 to 2010 and provides important documentation about well-established and lesser-known artists. Shaw used our artist file for Pauline Thompson when curating the major retrospective of her work, Combined Cosmologies , held at the Pah Homestead. He said: "If the files weren’t there my picture of her work, her word

A Man, A Plan, A Tram: A Truth about Takapuna's Tramway

By Auckland Libraries - October 25, 2023

Image: Takapuna Tramways & Ferry Company directors, 1907-1912 (left- right, from top row): Paul M Hansen, John Brown, Alexander R Morrison, Edwin Mitchelson, Henry Brett, Henry Hopper Adams, Captain James Smith, William J Geddis, and William Blomfield. Paul Maximilian Hansen had a plan for Tāmaki Makaurau. The Danish-German immigrant and London-based entrepreneur envisioned an electric tramway network that would emanate from the Central City to reach every corner of Auckland, stretching far into sections that were still farmland and bush. He desired this system out of no sense of altruism, community connectedness or transportation efficiency. No, he and his cabal of investors wanted it so they could sell property. Specifically, their property. Image: Muir & Moodie. Postcard of Lake Takapuna (Pupuke), 1909. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa PS.002450 . By the early 1900s, the Coromandel goldfields were depleted, their vast wealth pocketed by Aotearoa’s nouveau riche, wh

A deal with the devil: the 1821 English translation of Goethe’s Faust

By AkL - October 20, 2023

Image: Mephistopheles appears to Faust in his study, Faust / by Goethe ; translated by Abraham Hayward ; with illustrations by Willy Pogany, London : Hutchinson, 1908, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections IL:1908 POGA. The idea of making a deal with the devil has a long history in popular imagination. Robert Johnson made a deal with a devil at the crossroads for his otherworldly guitar playing abilities while Faust was after unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasure. The Faust legend was first dramatized by famous Elizabethan playwright and spy Christopher Marlowe in the late sixteenth century in his play Doctor Faustus . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749-1832) interpretation of the Faust legend was his life’s work – began in 1772 when he was in his twenties and returned to again and again until he completed Part Two a year before he died. The long play, mostly written in rhyming verse, is divided into Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two - the first dealing with Faust’s pact

Tree lovers, seed savers and sponge cities

By AkL - October 13, 2023

Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections’ have significant holdings on the topics of environmental action, conservation, and natural history. On show now on level 2 of the Central City Library | Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero, till Monday 30 October, is the wonderful display: 'Tree lovers, seed savers and sponge cities'. In this display we focus on the manuscript, or archive collections, and supplement these with items from our ephemera, photograph, and oral history collections. This blog post highlights some of the material and information from the display. Manuscript collections take the form of physical or digital documents (or a mix of both) and can include material like scrapbooks, diaries, letters, and minute books. They can also contain photographs, ephemera, audio visual material and other taonga. Collections can range in size from the small - Richard Davis’s two meteorological diaries, to the medium sized - the seven boxes in the Tahuna Torea Rangers archive, to the very large -

The rare Third Folio in Auckland: a much travelled Folio by Mr William Shakespeare

By Admin - October 09, 2023

In 2023 the world is celebrating four hundred years since the publication of Shakespeare’s plays in the volume now called the First Folio . Auckland Libraries is proud to care for the First Folio (1623) and the subsequent 17th century folios two, three and four. All but one were gifted to Auckland by Sir George Grey whose founding bequest established the Auckland Free Public Library in 1887. The story of the provenance of the Third Folio is an interesting one. The Third Folio is a rarer volume than either the Second (1632) or the Fourth (1685), probably because unsold copies perished in the Great Fire of London in 1666. Our copy was purchased from the Lush Family some time after 1951. It came to New Zealand some hundred years earlier when the Reverend Vicesimus Lush, his wife Blanche and four children arrived here. It had been owned by a forebear of Mrs Blanche Lush nee Hawkins, the Reverend Thomas Hawkins, Chaplain of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1754-1772 whose bookplate is in the vol

Beyond the Bookshelves: Miraculous Medieval Manuscripts

By Admin - September 22, 2023

Follow the journey of a rare manuscript, from the curators’ selection to a book conservator's assessment, and finally, to find its place in our Miraculous Medieval Manuscripts exhibition. Learn about what’s required for the care and handling of a medieval manuscript and enjoy a peek into the process of bringing an exhibition to life with Auckland Council Libraries Heritage Collections. Visit the Miraculous Medieval Manuscripts exhibition on Level 2, Central City Library until 11 November 2023 Browse the collection on Kura Heritage Collections Online . Credits Auckland Council Libraries Ngaio Vince-Dewerse – Book Conservator Renee Orr & Jane Wild – Rare Book Specialists and Exhibition Curators Sue Berman – Project Lead Popular Ltd Director and Videographer – Benj Brooking Post-Production Director – Juliana Machado Additional thanks Auckland Council Libraries Heritage Collections and Engagement teams; Digital Assets Team, Conservation and Preservation Team, Library and Lea

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