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Archey collection of ethnographic negatives.

documentary heritage
  • Description

    Collection of sheet film and glass plate negatives produced by Gilbert Archey in the course of his work for his book Whaowhia; Maori Art and Its Artists and other ethnological research on Maori and Pacific art. Includes photographs taken in other museums in New Zealand and overseas.

    Of the 1760 items comprising the collection, the bulk are concerned with Maori and Polynesian traditional material culture. The emphasis is on Maori and more specifically, larger Maori wood sculpture.

    The collection was kept in the Ethnology Department for many years and it was continually drawn on for publication, before being deposited in the Library. Whatever the original arrangement may have been it was largely lost. The arrangement adopted by Malcolm Ross is based on Archey's publications, the principal one being Whaowhia (1977, posthumous).

    Archey continued to contribute to the collection after his retirement in 1964. The earliest dated negatives are 1924, the last 1972 - two years before his death in 1974 aged 84.

    The majority of the negatives relate to the Auckland Museum's own collections. He extended his pool of material by copying from published and original sources. The problems of attribution are compounded by contributions from his colleagues of both negatives and prints from New Zealand and overseas collections. One can assume that the majority of negatives are Archey's but the contribution of other photographers is clearly greater than that directly acknowledged. It is also obvious that many of Archey's negatives have been dispersed. Other photographers include Rigby Allan, A.N. Breckon, T.W. Downes, L.T. Griffin, H. Hamilton, V.L. Jackson, J. McDonald, Harley Powell, A.T. Pycroft. [notes taken from the introduction to Malcolm Ross's Inventory]

  • Other Id

    69900 (Presto content ID)

    PH-2014-278-2 (DBTextworks migration number)

    153968 (DBTextworks system ID)

  • Department

Images and documents

Catalogue

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