Colin McCahon’s Art School report and more

Monday, May 11th, 2015 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

MS-1177-045

MS-1177/045 – Colin McCahon’s report from his first year at Dunedin’s King Edward Technical College Art School 1937 described him as “one of the most promising students in attendance”!

Blog post prepared by Dr Ali Clarke,  Library Assistant – Reference

The Hocken has the honour of holding a large collection of personal and business papers of one of New Zealand’s greatest painters, Colin McCahon (1919-1987) and his wife Anne McCahon (1915-1993). They donated these papers to us some years ago, but the restriction on access has now expired, meaning researchers who visit the library can delve into this fascinating collection (one restriction does remain – access to personal letters written by people still alive requires their written permission). We’ve just finished repackaging the collection and adding it to our catalogue.

The collection dates back to Colin McCahon’s childhood, indeed earlier, as it includes papers of his mother Ethel McCahon (1888-1973), whose father William Ferrier was also a talented painter and photographer. There is a long sequence of correspondence between Colin and his parents, but most personal letters in the collection are ones received by Colin and Anne from family and friends. There are numerous letters from John and Anna Caselberg, Patricia France, Rodney Kennedy, Doris Lusk, Ron O’Reilly and Toss Woollaston, along with smaller collections (sometimes just one letter) from many other artists and writers.

There are also many ‘business’ letters in the collection. These include letters from galleries, societies and art dealers, together with other papers concerning exhibitions. There are a few papers relating to specific projects, including coloured glass work, the Urewera mural, and murals at the Otago University Library and Founders Theatre, Hamilton. Colin McCahon’s interest in theatre is reflected in items from drama productions he was involved with, including scripts and designs.

One intriguing series is publications owned by Colin McCahon. Among them are art books and various religious texts (some of them annotated). There are also a few reproductions of art works which interested him and clippings of illustrations from magazines.

MS-4251-252

MS-4251/252 – Colin McCahon’s copy of the Book of Mormon. There are also several marked versions of the Bible in the collection.

You can view the full list of this wonderful collection on our online catalogue Hakena at: http://hakena.otago.ac.nz/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/DESCRIPTION/WEB_DESC_DET_REP/SISN%20211004?sessionsearch]

To see the full list, click on the “View Arrangement” button on the left hand side of the screen.

 

Hocken Snapshop now feeding into Digital NZ

Monday, May 12th, 2014 | Anna Blackman | No Comments

We are very pleased to announce that the Hocken Snapshop database of around 30,000 images of our photographic collections is now feeding into Digital NZ. This provides different functionality than Snapshop, and allows you to search for Hocken images along with 27 million other digital items from across NZ. You can search across all 27 million at once or narrow your search using the filters system on the site.

Thanks to the Digital NZ staff and also to NZ Micrographics, who designed and support the Recollect database that we use for Snapshop.

Check out Digital NZ from this link http://digitalnz.org.nz/

 

 

 

 

Hocken Snapshop of photographs from the Library’s collections goes live

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 | Anna Blackman | 2 Comments

The Hocken has just launched a new online service making the photographic collections housed at the Hocken Library more accessible to remote users.

Over 33,000 images have been digitized, relating to people and places from all over New Zealand.  A small portion of the Hocken’s large shipping collection is also included.  Copies of the images are available for purchase over the internet and a zoom function greatly assists in the use of the photographs for research purposes.

Emails from readers are already arriving on a daily basis confirming that the site is proving an instant success.  Coupled with the fact that the Photographs Collection database is also now available online, people are more able to see for themselves what we hold and direct specific questions and requests to staff.

The Hocken Snapshop link is as follows:

http://hockensnapshop.ac.nz/

Children from Milton School visiting Thomson & Co. factory in Dunedin by E.A. Phillips, Dudley Collection, Photographs, Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hakena, University of Otago. S10-243c.

Post prepared by Anna Petersen, Assistant Curator of Photographs.

Find out more about what’s at the Hocken – Reference Guides

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 | Anna Blackman | 1 Comment

Do you want to know more about the wonderful treasures to be found at the Hocken? The Hocken staff have written various reference guides to help researchers locate material in our collections. These are available in hardcopy in the reference area, or as PDFs on our website at http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/hocken/guides.html

As well as a general introduction to the Hocken and a guide to Maori resources, we have two main series of guides: genealogy guides and research guides. The genealogy guides include information on our resources for researching Maori whakapapa; births, deaths and marriages; shipping; education; occupations; and residences. We also have a guide to internet resources, and a guide to the records of Otago and Southland orphanages and children’s homes (some of these sources are held by other institutions).

The series of research guides currently stands at 17 with several new ones appearing each year. These guides are primarily aimed at university students and researchers, but they include information which will also be of interest to many other people. They do not list all our resources, but give examples of items in our collections along with suggestions on how to locate other relevant material. Popular guides in this series include those to war-related material (there are separate guides for World War I, World War II, the South African War and two guides on the New Zealand Wars), missionary sources, religion sources and mining sources. Recent additions to the series are on Pacific Islands sources and tourism sources, and a health sciences reference guide will be out next month.

We hope you find these guides useful, and welcome your feedback!

Post prepared by Ali Clarke, Reference Assistant