The NZ Cartoon Archive at the
Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington celebrated its 20th birthday on 5
April with the launch of the first in a series of monographs, A Cartoon War, about the role editorial
cartoons played in New Zealand during World War One.
The monograph, by Sarah Murray,
currently curator of Canterbury social history at Canterbury Museum, was
adapted from her MA thesis by Cartoon Archive founder Ian F. Grant.
“Monographs are, by definition, significant,
specialised works of scholarship that treat relatively narrow topics in
considerable detail,” says Ian Grant.
“The Cartoon Archive will continue to publish broader based books, but
it was felt important to fill in as many gaps as possible in the history of
cartooning in New Zealand, and monographs are admirable ways of doing so.”
Ian Grant will be general editor of
the monograph series, with one publication issued annually. The next two will
deal with the way cartoons have moulded or reinforced public opinion in New
Zealand about racial issues and religion.
The NZ Cartoon Archive has grown
impressively over the last two decades.
What began as one person’s idea – partly to get boxes of cartoons
out from under his bed – has, in 20 years, grown into a fully fledged archive,
and the only one of its kind in Australasia.
“When I researched The Unauthorized Version, the country’s
first cartoon history, in the late 1970s, I quickly became aware that we had a
remarkable heritage of first-rate cartoonists stretching back well over one
hundred years,” says Ian Grant. “This, and the work of contemporary
cartoonists, needed to be preserved as increasingly valuable historical sources
of information about prevailing attitudes and views of each generation.”
The NZ Cartoon Archive was launched by
then prime minister Jim Bolger on 1 April 1992. Since then it has collected
about 50,000 cartoons, originals and copies, by some 60 cartoonists. With this
increasingly valuable resource it has been able to mount 14 exhibitions that
have been seen around the country and, in one instance, in Canberra. The
Cartoon Archive has also published six books.
A
Cartoon War - 118 pages and 81
cartoons - will be available only from the NZ Cartoon Archive. $35.00 (incl. postage and packaging). Contact
the NZ Cartoon Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library, P O Box 12349, Wellington
or email ifgrant@xtra.co.nz
Photo caption: At the 5 April event in Wellington, Ian F.
Grant, the Cartoon Archive’s founder, Sarah Murray, author of A Cartoon War, and Sir Geoffrey Palmer who launched the
monograph.
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