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2010 Hocken Lecture

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments


Constructing a past: Hocken and the memorialising
of history

Tuesday 16 November, 5.30pm, followed by refreshments


Castle 1 Lecture Theatre, University of Otago, Dunedin

ALL WELCOME


The theme of this year’s Hocken Lecture will be drawn from Jock Phillips’ thinking about Hocken and his generation of history-makers. He says “Dr Hocken was a leading member of the first generation of Pakeha New Zealanders who set out to construct a past for New Zealand. He did so partly through his writing but more importantly through his collecting. At the same time there was another way of preserving memories of the past. New Zealanders began to put up memorials, statues and monuments throughout the country to make permanent the memory of significant people and historical events. In this lecture I want to explore briefly the history that Hocken sought to preserve and then to compare this with the history memorialised in stone in New Zealand in 1880-1914”. This is a theme that resonates with the Library’s celebration of its centenary of service to scholarship and documenting life in Aotearoa New Zealand.

100 Up – a snapshot of Dunedin life: 1910 & 2010

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments


100 UP is the Hocken’s latest exhibition. Taking its name from Seven UP, a successful series of documentary films that follows the lives of fourteen individuals at seven-year intervals, the exhibition similarly uses a longitudinal method of study. Mounted to commemorate the Hocken Library’s 1910 opening, it presents a snapshot of Dunedin life from that year, and this.


An interesting array of objects including postcards, photographs, posters and ephemera, that date to around 1910 are placed alongside 2010 representations of the city. Contemporary observations of Dunedin are largely presented through the photographs of Max Oettli, which were commissioned by the Friends of Hocken Collections to mark the Library’s centenary. The Hocken would like to thank the Friends for this generous gift.

We have produced a stunning poster to promote this show. It will be coming to a bollard near you soon – so keep a look out for the exhibition’s distinctive ‘100 UP’ logo. The reverse side of the poster features images of a number of collection items including postcards, historic photographs, St George food labels and a 1910 edition of the ‘Sure to Rise’ cookery book, on the reverse. The poster is available for purchase at the Hocken’s office or email us with your order at hocken@otago.ac.nz.

Regardless of whether you are new to Dunedin or a long term resident we think you will enjoy the show. If you are unable to visit the exhibition in person, an online version of the exhibition is currently in production and you will be able to view it soon via the Hocken page of the University of Otago’s website.

Natalie Poland, Curator of Pictorial Collections

Doing Well and Doing Good : Ross and Glendining : Scottish Enterprise in New Zealand

Thursday, July 29th, 2010 | Anna Blackman | 3 Comments

The Hocken Collections recently hosted a book launch for the long awaited (by Hocken staff anyway) book by Stephen Jones, Doing Well and Doing Good : Ross and Glendining: Scottish Enterprise in New Zealand, published by OU Press.

Steve has been a regular visitor to the Hocken through several “generations” of archivists and reference desk staff. For many years he made an annual pilgrimage to Dunedin from his Scottish home in Dundee to complete the next phase of research on the records of Ross and Glendining held in the Hocken Collections.  Tips on finding material in the collection and Steve’s interests in Ross and Glendining were passed on from archivist to archivist as it became known that exemplary service could result in a free lunch! Reams of photocopied pages were dispatched to Dundee, but they only seemed to encourage him to travel back to NZ with further questions to be answered by interrogation of the original records!
Business communications from an 1877 Ross and Glendining letterbook, the paper is translucent and thin as tissue and difficult to photocopy from.
We admired his passion for lists of obscurely written financial reports and the analysis of the business data he copied from the records and wondered what the result would be. My own interest in the progress of the project was further stimulated by attending an excellent presentation in the School of Business by Steve on his research findings. The quarterly financial reports had been analysed, the columns of handwritten numbers in pounds shilllings and pence totted up and made meaningful and Steve described the role of Ross and Glendining in the fabric of NZ life. I’m looking forward to reading the book and  reviews are very positive. The Hocken staff are really pleased to see the work finished and published but we will miss Steve and his visits.
A handwritten financial activity report for the six months prior to January 1894 from the Ross and Glendining archives. Stephen read hundreds of pages such as this during his research.

Two new exhibitions at the Hocken Gallery

Monday, May 3rd, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

Two new exhibitions have just been installed at the Hocken Gallery. The touring exhibition ‘The Labour of Herakles’, a show of 8 etchings and 12 lithographs by Christchurch-based printmaker Marian Maguire, will tour for a further two years after it finishes here on 17 July. In this series of works Maguire casts the Greek hero Herakles as a pioneer in New Zealand’s nineteeth century landscape. Appropriating well known pictorial imagery has long been a feature of Maguire’s practice. Here is a photograph of Artcrew installing the Maguire show.

The accompanying exhibition ‘Forever After’, drawn mainly from the Hocken’s collections compliments the touring show by exploring the work of artists who have copied, adapted and re-purposed historical art. This image shows me (the Hocken’s Curator of Pictorial Collections) brushing dust that has gathered in the drapery folds of a Brucciani cast, after the famous Greek statue Venus de Milo. The copying of such sculptures provided the basis of drawing classes at art schools in New Zealand from the late nineteenth, through to the early decades of the twentieth century. The exhibition includes a Greek amphora from the Otago Museum dating to c. 550BC, a fabulous copy of Nathaniel Dance’s 1776 portrait of Captain James Cook, a sampling of Joseph Banks’ Florilegium series and two contemporary portraits by 2008 Frances Hodgkins Fellow, Heather Straka. Straka’s paintings are based on an eighteenth century drawing by Augustus de Sainson of Nataii, a Maori chief from Bream Bay.

ANZAC Day

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

Photo from AG-577/023 Hocken Collections Uare O Hakena

Keen World War 1 researchers may feel they recognise this image – that’s because it is a photograph of the “man with the donkey” at Gallipoli that Sapper Horace Millichamp Moore-Jones based his famous paintings on. The paintings depict Private John Simpson (his full name was John Simpson Kirkland), but the man in the photo is actually Private Richard Henderson of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

The photo you see is scanned from a negative which is part of a substantial collection of WW1 photographs amongst the papers of James Gardner Jackson held by the Hocken Collections. The collection also includes Jackson’s diaries and correspondence with the Australian War Memorial explaining the circumstances in which he took the picture. Jackson did actually meet Private Simpson and worked with him for about 5 days but did not take a picture of Simpson. It was only a little later that he took the picture of his colleague Private Richard Henderson. Both Jackson and Henderson were in the NZ Field Ambulance Unit at Gallipoli. In a letter to the Australian War Memorial dated 22 September 1937, Jackson states that the wounded soldier was an “Aussie” so the photo could be said to illustrate the ANZAC spirit with New Zealanders and Australians working together in appalling conditions to help each other.

Although the photo was taken in May 1915, Jackson did not see it until 1919 when he returned to NZ. In the meantime his photos had been developed by his family. The artist Moore-Jones had been discharged and had returned to NZ by 1917 and during a lecture in Dunedin on the war, illustrated with copies of his watercolours, he was asked if he had a painting of Simpson and his donkey. Moore-Jones said no he didn’t but that if he had a photograph he would make one. James Jackson’s brother supplied him with a copy of the photo the next day, Moore-Jones identified it in error as being of Simpson and produced the first painting.

As well as the negative there are several prints of the photo in the Jackson collection, curiously and somewhat tantalisingly the back of one of the prints is inscribed “Murphy, Paterson, VC Anzac, Received the Victoria Cross on 1st of June and killed on June 8th”. Well, my research indicates that one of the donkeys was called Murphy, but that sometimes Simpson was also called Murphy by some, but where “Paterson” fits in I haven’t been able to work out. Perhaps the name of the injured Australian? Perhaps just another error of identification?

Private Henderson’s personnel file is now available in digitised form from Archives NZ and you can find a digitised copy of the painting at the Australian War Memorial website. You can find out more about Moore-Jones from the NZ Dictionary of Biography.

Dr Mervyn McLean donation of Maori and Pacific Music

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 | Anna Blackman | 2 Comments

One of our most significant donations in 2009 was the Dr Mervyn McLean collection of Maori and Cook Islands music. The collection has been added to the archives and manuscripts section of the Library and is catalogued under the call number ARC-0613. It is fully listed on the Hakena catalogue.
Right: Dr Mclean, Anne McLean and Professor John Drummond at the Hocken Collections 2009 Donors event.

Dr McLean is acknowledged world wide as an authority on the music of Oceania, particularly traditional Maori music. A graduate of the University of Otago, Dr McLean was the founding Head of the Archive of  Maori and Pacific Music at the University of Auckland from 1970 until his retirement in 1992. The collection that has been donated to the Hocken is Dr McLean’s personal collection of the original tapes, notes, transcriptions and translations of the waiata, cds and mint copies of his books. The material relates mainly to NZ Maori with recordings dating back to 1958, but also includes 30 hours of material recorded in Aitutaki and Mangaia in 1967. Although it duplicates what is already available through the Auckland archive, this generous donation will allow more researchers to access the material here at the in Dunedin. The collection will be useful to iwi, musicians, historians, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists and other researchers who will be able to listen to the recordings through the digital copies, and read the notations and transcripts.

Centenary celebrations 31st March 2010

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

Last Wednesday was a busy day for the Hocken Collections but luckily food featured prominently throughout the day to keep us energised! The day started with a celebration shared breakfast for Hocken staff in our seminar room with white linen and fresh flowers, not to mention the yummy home cooked breakfast. The breakfast was not only celebrating 100 years of the Hocken being open to the public, but also more sadly the departure of staff member Cynthia Haakman who couldn’t have picked a more auspicious day to finish her time at Hocken. We wish Cynthia all the best for her future endeavours.


Present and past Hocken staff were joined by friends, staff of the Dunedin Public Library, Otago Settlers Museum and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and University Library staff and many researchers for genial morning and afternoon teas with commemorative decorated cakes and lots of great converstation.

The cakes were decorated depicting the Hocken wing of the Otago Museum, Dr T.M. Hocken and the present Hocken Library building.

Above – guests enjoying coffee and cake.

A little later in the day at 5.30pm, former Hocken Librarian, Stuart Strachan gave the inaugural Otago Anniversary Day speech on the history of the Hocken Library/Collections. Stuart spoke about the history of our institution and hopefully his well researched and fascinating speech will be published soon. This was followed by a celebration dinner at the University staff club hosted by the History Department. Sorry – no pictures of this event.

You Can Now Browse the Hocken’s Founding Pictures Collection Online

Friday, April 2nd, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

To mark our institution’s centenary we have made the founding art collection of the Hocken, Dr Hocken’s picture collection, available online via the University of Otago Library’s Digital Collections.


The showcase offers a representational sample of the pictures that Dr T. M. Hocken gave in trust for the people of New Zealand. At the time of his death in 1910 he had amassed 437 pictorial items, a collection of more than 4,000 printed volumes, as well as photographs, manuscripts and maps. Collectively these items are the Hocken Library’s founding gift. Dr Hocken’s abiding interest in the history of Southern New Zealand continues to shape what the Hocken collects today and preserves for the future benefit of researchers.

Visit Digital Collections:
Digital.otago.ac.nz

It you haven’t visited the site before have a look a some of the other material in our collections view ‘A Showcase of the Hocken Collections’. Most of the images that appear here are the result of two digitisation projects undertaken by the Hocken’s Pictorial Collections staff between 2007 and 2009 and funded through the generous assistance of the University Library.

Banners for the forecourt

Monday, March 29th, 2010 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

Do you like our new banners? Just in time for our centenary on Wednesday we have had some banners installed on the Hocken forecourt. One features a close up of Dr Thomas Morland Hocken and the other a design from the book, The grammar of ornament : illustrated by examples from various styles of ornament, one hundred and twelve plates, by Owen Jones, published in 1910.