Artwork, Artefact or Archive? The Evolution of New Zealand’s Official First World War Art Collection

Abstract

ABSTRACT While the inclusive focus of the First World War centenary has restored many marginalised stories to local and global narratives, most New Zealanders remain unaware of their nation’s official First World War art collection. The artworks produced for this collection were meant to act as both documentation of the New Zealand forces and as sites of commemoration for the nation’s sacrifice. They were intended for display inside a national war museum that was planned but never built; instead, the collection was placed into storage within the Dominion Museum and later the National Art Gallery. It has rarely been exhibited. By the 1960s, the collection’s cultural significance remained so unacknowledged that several works were almost destroyed. After being transferred to Archives New Zealand in 1981, the entire collection was digitised and made available online—granting the works an unprecedented level of accessibility. This article interrogates some of the reasons the collection failed to find its audience and achieve any significant level of cultural relevance across its hundred-year history. In particular, it examines how each shift in the collection’s evolution—from artwork to artefact to archive—has transformed its functional meaning and poses questions about its future within war remembrance practices.