Harding Collection named in UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand 2024 Inscriptions

Four new documentary heritage inscriptions from five national and regional institutions have been added to our national Memory of the World Register.

Memory of the World Chair, Jane Wild said:

“Two of New Zealand’s literary giants, a 50-year-old television series with wide impact, and a local photographer’s record of colonial cultures meeting, join over 50 other inscriptions as a record of how our stories are recorded on paper, glass, cellulose and video tape”.

Janet Frame’s 100^th birthday is celebrated on 28 August. Frame is world famous as a modern writer of novels, short stories, poetry and autobiography, now available at the Hocken Collections in Dunedin.

Author Frank Sargeson is also recognised. His papers are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library. Takapuna-based Sargeson published short stories and novels in a new New Zealand voice.

One in three of the 1974 population of New Zealand watched the six part television series Tangata Whenua: The People of the Land.

And in Whanganui, photographer William Harding recorded 19^th century life and people in a dynamic community where two cultures met.

Jane Wild congratulated the five institutions recognised by the 2024 inscriptions for their efforts. “To be inscribed on the Memory of the World register we require the marriage of unique documentary heritage content and a research environment with capability to preserve the collections and make them available. This is an interesting professional dynamic that these four collections demonstrate ranging from manuscript drafts to shopping lists, through recorded interviews and glass plate negatives of 19^th century Whanganui.”

The 2024 inscriptions

The William James Harding Collection of Whanganui-Rangitikei photographs and negatives is our first inscription for a collection held across three institutions. The people and places through the 1850s-1890s documented by William Harding are from the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, the Whanganui Regional Museum and the Alexander Heritage and Research Library Te Rerenga Mai o te Kāuru in the Whanganui District Library. This collection of more than 6,500 images gives remarkable insights into the people, the region and the Whanganui River.

This record of Whanganui resonates in Whanganui UNESCO City of Design.

The Janet Frame: Literary and Personal Papers inscription is timely in 2024, one hundred years since Janet Paterson Frame’s birth in Dunedin. The papers archived at Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago include original manuscripts, correspondence and household documentation.

Dunedin is the UNESCO City of Literature and the Hocken Collections hold significant New Zealand literary collections, including the Charles Brasch literary and personal papers (https://unescomow.nz/inscription/charles-brasch-literary-and-personal-papers) inscribed in 2013).

Tangata Whenua: The People of the Land was broadcast as a documentary series on television fifty years ago in 1974. When it screened it reached a remarkable audience of one million viewers in a population on just three million. The kaumatua and kuia interview in this landmark series can still be heard today thanks to preservation work by Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision and the TVNZ+ platform. Their kōrero directed by Barry Barclay is vivid and historically poignant in 2024.

It is appropriate to recognise the pioneering television production work of John O’Shea of Pacific Films in Wellington UNESCO City of Film.

The Frank Sargeson Collection is also inscribed in 2024. The Sargeson Archive comprises literary drafts, correspondence and photographs held at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. Frank was a friend and mentor to many New Zealand writers, including Janet Frame and Karl Stead. Janet lived on Sargeson’s property on Esmonde Road, Takapuna from April 1955 to July 1956, where she worked on her first full length novel Owls do Cry (1975).

The late historian Michael King is present in three of these inscriptions. He worked on biographies of both Frank Sargeson and Janet Frame, and he was an interviewer in the Tangata Whenua television series.