Soldier, Curator, Monuments Man This podcast is brought to you by Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum. Elizabeth Meers: I would have been about three years old, and my grandpa was in the kitchen, and she was putting away the dishes, she suddenly turned around to me in the lounge and pointed out the window. She said, “There's daddy's plane!” And he was on the flying boat coming back from Singapore. Finn McCahon-Jones:
The year was 1946, and that seaplane with its stocky fuselage circling above the Auckland harbour, before touching down on the water, must have been a thrilling sight for a preschooler, but it's who was in that Catalina flying boat and what the secret war mission had just been on that we're about to immerse ourselves in. I'm Finn McCahon-Jones, and this is the Amp, the new podcast from Auckland Museum, which amplifies the incredible stories from our collections, our mahi and our place in the Pacific. To kick off the series, we're exploring the amazing life of Sir Gilbert Archey, who ran the museum from 1924 to 1964. Gilbert was prolific, one of those lucky people who can be a devoted expert in seemingly any field they want to sink their teeth into. His knowledge spanned subjects from education, the military, researching moa and native frogs to taonga Māori and sculptures. In a way, he was a human embodiment of a museum, a creator, a curator, a communicator and a conservator. There's so much to know about his life and legacy, and we'll be diving into that later on in the story. But first, the man and the mission. That beloved grandfather landing on the Auckland harbour was Gilbert Archey. He was returning from a secret World War Two mission on behalf of the British Army, bringing much delight to his three-year-old granddaughter, Elizabeth Meers. At the time, she was just excited to see him home and safe, but over the decades, she's come to realise the importance of the mission he was on because Gilbert Archey, her grandfather, was a Monuments Man.
But what exactly is a Monuments Man? The Monuments Men were a group of men and women from 13 nations tasked with protecting items of cultural and historical significance during and after the war. They were part of the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives programme established as part of the Allied war effort in 1943. This group was made up of museum directors, curators, art historians, architects and other cultural experts this unlikely, bunched on scratchy woollen army uniforms and stepped out from behind museum desks, architectural drawing boards and university lecterns and into the chaos of war.
Who better to protect and preserve artworks and historical and cultural monuments in the face of the most devastating conflict the world had ever known, than the people who knew them best, even if they weren't your average soldiers. Art and cultural heritage are often among the early casualties of war, suffering, destruction and theft amidst the chaos of conflict during the Nazi regime. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis stole about a fifth of all art in Europe, more than 5 million cultural objects before the war ended. Though, part of the reason behind looting was about money and personal greed. It also came down to Hitler's desire to wipe out identities and cultures he deemed unacceptable plundering works from Jewish families, or confiscating the degenerate art that challenged Hitler's ideals. He wanted to keep what he thought was good and eradicate what he thought was bad.
Of the 348 Monuments Men and Women active throughout the war, most operated in Europe, recovering art and other cultural objects stolen by the Nazis and hidden away in jails and castles, caves, mines and even in fake coffins. Outside Europe, there was just one Monuments Man stationed in Southeast Asia working tirelessly to predict churches, temples, monuments and archives in Sumatra, Java, Malaya and Indochina. Today, we know those places as Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, and that's where Gilbert Archey comes in. During the war, he'd been responsible for protecting and preserving taonga a bit closer to home, it's likely that experience had a hand in him being called up for the solo monuments man mission in Southeast Asia. A lot of what we know about this mission in Gilbert Archey's life work has been documented by his granddaughter, Elizabeth Meers. It's been 100 years since Gilbert Archey took up his tenure at the museum, and now in her 80s, Elizabeth comes into the museum library to research her grandfather's incredible life.
Elizabeth Meers:
Well, every week I've been up to the museum with the odd exception, and I usually grab out the yearbook that I'm working on at the time. And over a course of three years, three and a half years, I've managed to accumulate about seven display books of material. So each time I come up, I start with a yearbook and go through them. And I started off with book number one, which just is his family history, and then it goes into his territorials and army life, World War One, home service, and then into the museum.
Finn McCahon-Jones: So, when did she start to realise her grandfather had been involved in such an important mission? Elizabeth Meers: Fairly early on, because my mother talked a little bit about the fact he was away and he went to Asia, but they never talked about it in the family when he came back. So there were no experiences related. There's nothing written down. There are no diaries. There's nothing.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Years after watching the flying boat coming into land, her interest was piqued when a Hollywood film about the Monuments Men, starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon and Hugh Bonneville came out. Elizabeth Meers:
Well, I knew that my grandfather was a monuments man, and I suppose it was when I decided to make an effort to write down details of his life…Probably by the film. I was really aware of it. Looked it up online, Mr. Google, and he put me in contact with somebody, and not much happened. And I persevered and went on until I finally got in contact with the CEO of the Monuments Men Foundation in America. Finn McCahon-Jones:
As she set to work in the Museum's research library, she began to get a picture of how her grandfather came to work for the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives programme over in Southeast Asia. For most of the Second World War and before being called up as a Monuments Man, Gilbert was at home serving as a Lieutenant Colonel and Commander for the Fourth Battalion Auckland Regiment, commonly referred to as the ‘Fourth Aucks’. Despite being temporarily relieved of his museum role during the war, the protection of the museum and the taonga housed within remained a key responsibility for Gilbert. He put up blackout curtains in all the sea-facing windows at the museum, helped by Jocelyn, Elizabeth's mother.
Elizabeth Meers:
There was a tremendous amount of packing things up for protection and sending out to various stores all around the Auckland province to protect all the wonderful artefacts, which involved all sorts of things like sandbagging the canoe, because the museum was built around it, they couldn't get it out because it was too big. And I think they had to dethatch the meeting house because of fire that could have happened during the war. Everything had to be packed up into cases and moved back after the war.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Over the years, while working at the museum, I'd heard stories about the collection being stashed away across Auckland for safekeeping, but everything I heard was lunchroom conversations. I hadn't read any official history. Luckily, I work in the documentary Heritage Department.
I love walking down this, this corridor every time I come down the as you look down, you can see the curvature of the building, and the bookshelf turns around so you can never quite see the end of the bookshelf. It's quite mesmerizing.
Years ago, when I worked at Auckland Museum in the Botany department, I was cataloguing the collection, and I came across a whole lot of specimens that had been dried and pressed and stuck on sheets of paper, like A3 sheets of paper, but these ones had been specifically cut around the specimens on the page, almost like a jigsaw puzzle, and the page had been put back together. And I remember asking the curator that it was really curious that all of these specimens had been so intentionally cut. And he said to me, during the war, we had divided our collection into two and some were stored in lava caves around Auckland to protect them, just in case anything happened to the museum. And I thought this was kind of an amazing and crazy prospect that we had, you know, we had, we were storing our collections in lava caves around Auckland. And of course, Auckland is known for its volcanic landscape, and it was really interesting to think that we had these caves and our collection stored in them. And so, I came to Pia and asked her if she knew about this.
Pia Gahagan:
Hi, I'm Pia Gahagan, and I'm the Collection Manager for the Museum Archives. And when Finn came to me to ask if I had any knowledge about whether or not the museum had moved anything into lava caves. I have to say it is something that I had heard sort of rumoured in the past by various other staff members that not something I'd ever looked into. And so this podcast made me think maybe this is something I really should investigate a little bit more. And I have to say it was a real journey of finding a lot of really cool information about what the museum did during the period of war with regards to protecting objects. And the meeting minutes that we hold in the archives was a really good way in, as well as our annual reports and then the director's correspondence. So that's what I kind of trawled through to find information. And lo and behold, lava caves popped up, which was very cool to see.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Yeah, it was. It was actually really fun coming into the archives with Pia. And so we're in a room here full of boxes, and we just got out the boxes. And like you have to do when you research, you just have to pull out folder after folder and open them and look at letter after letter. And we found, we found some information about the lava caves. Pia Gahagan:
We did. And so, a name that I had come across was Sir Frank Crossley Mappin, and he was a kind of, I guess, I guess a man about town, if you could say that he was a philanthropist and had quite a bit a good connection with the museum and with Archey, I would say. And so offered up the lava cave on his site – Finn McCahon-Jones: –use of his lava cave! Pia Gahagan:
Yeah, the use of his lava cave, which was very cool. So he he had a house in in Mountain Road in Epsom quite a large house, which is actually now the Government House Auckland. More importantly, this lava cave, which was offered and the board and Archey accepted the use of which is pretty incredible, and that was really the first off site location that we used for dispersing our objects to protect them.
So when I found out that Mappin was involved, I thought I'd have a look through the director correspondence, because there was probably going to be some sort of discussion regarding what we were going to do, how we were going to use his lava cave. So I went and got the box for “M”. Shall I go and get the box? Yeah, that'd be great. Let's have a look. Okay, so I found the folder for “M” and looked through to see if I could find any correspondence from map in which there was some discussion, which was fantastic to show that he had offered up the lava cave.
But then I thought, maybe I'll continue to look through the folder, because there may be other players or people involved, because this was sort of at the beginning of the discovery and lo and behold, at the back of that very folder, at the very end of the correspondence. Here I found under M for museum, M for museum, a list of all the contents that were put into the cave in Mappin’s property, which was just so exciting, such an exciting moment. Finn McCahon-Jones:
The list that we found is predominantly of our Asian collections, things like bronzes and jades and ceramics, and a lot of these are on display now. You wouldn't even know that they were boxed up and stored away during the war in a lava cave. You know, overseas, a lot of the collections were hidden away in caves. And then here we are, kind of hiding things away in caves over here, that caves are a universal, wonderful place to store things. But the thing that I found quite amazing about looking through these archives that Pia found us, it wasn't just, you know, slapdash. We weren't just shoving stuff in caves. They're beautifully catalogued. The how it's typed out, the boxes are labelled. They're, well, you know, custom crates are made. And so it's really considered, and you can really see the kind of the care and respect the museum is is doing for these objects, and you can really tell they don't particularly want to put them in a cave. The thing I find kind of sometimes difficult putting my mind back to the space is like, obviously there was real threat, yeah, that the war was going to come to New Zealand. Thinking about doing all this stuff now is just mind boggling. And of course, your mind does go to the conflict overseas that's happening at the moment, and just you see those pictures, and you just wonder how any collections or objects survive.
As Gilbert protected taonga from the threat of war at home, concern was growing about the enemies intent to steal or destroy art and artefacts, not just in Europe, but further afield in Asia too. There was also the general risk of wartime damage, so making sure our side didn't accidentally bomb things either. So in 1943 the British Museum began supplying lists of monuments and sites in need of protection to the South East Asia command, or SEAC. SEAC was the body set up to be in charge of allied operations in Southeast Asia during World War Two. At an April 1944 meeting between the SEAC representatives and archaeological advisor to the War Office, lieutenant colonel sir Leonard Woolley, it was decided to appoint a British officer to oversee the area.
Leonard Wooley voiced by an actor: It is agreed that a monument and Fine Arts officer will be needed for Malaya and Sumatra. You are the right man. Perhaps I ought to begin at the beginning and explain quite what this new and apparently rather anomalous branch of the army is monuments and fine art is a brand... Finn McCahon-Jones:
After being selected for the position, Gilbert was attached to the British Army on loan from the New Zealand Army. Gilbert arrived in Malaya in July 1945 before heading to Singapore in November. Elizabeth Meers:
Well he was sent there to look after and care for monuments and temples and protect these artefacts that were of historical value. So I believe that he was responsible for letting the forces know of buildings etc that needed to be protected and had to stay away from them. I mean, his tenure was only really for about nine or 10 months, that's all. So he made a great contribution in the short time that he was there, Finn McCahon-Jones:
According to the Monuments Men Foundation, Gilbert's efforts in the field were invaluable to the preservation of art and culture in Southeast Asia, one local art expert wrote a letter to the War Office commending him. Voice actor: I hope that one day it will be realised how much the biological sciences and Ethnology in Malaya owe to official forethought and to Colonel Archey's unselfish energy. Finn McCahon-Jones:
Unfortunately, Elizabeth hadn't been able to find out much of the finer details of her grandfather's service in Singapore. That's likely due to him being assigned to the British rather than the New Zealand Army. But we did find a press cutting from the Evening Star in April 1946 which Gilbert talks about the damage by the Japanese being quite small… Voice actor:
The Japanese had generally looked after the museums, historical buildings and monuments during their occupation of the country, said Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Archey, director of the Auckland Museum, on his arrival at Auckland on Saturday from Malaya, where he had been working for the past nine months, inspecting and arranging for the repair of war damage to buildings of a cultural and religious nature.
There had been some looting of historical treasures, Colonel Archey said, but the Japanese could not be blamed for this, as they had spent a good deal of time and money endeavouring to obtain replacements. Colonel Archey added that two libraries at Malacca and Penang had been looted, and from the latter, the best collection of early works on the history of exploration in the east, indies had been stolen. It would be impossible to recover any of these books as they had been sold in the marketplace for wrapping paper at a time when paper was scarce.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Through the process of researching for this podcast, we've been working with the Museum's Collection Access Librarian, Madison Pine. She's also been helping Elizabeth with her journey. Madison Pine:
I first met Elizabeth when she came into the research library. She was looking at her grandfather, Sir Gilbert Archey's Online Cenotaph record, and needed some help interpreting his military personnel files. So, her and I went through it together and sort of pinpointed exactly where he would have been during his service in the First World War, and then later we tried to figure out where he was serving during the Second World War, and that's sort of when we started to dig deeper into finding out about his service as a Monuments and Fine Arts Officer.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Inside Gilbert's Army record, Madison found a copy of the letter he received back in 1944 from Lieutenant Woolley, explaining there was another reason why the work was important... Leonard Woolley voiced by an actor:
The justification for its existence is not primarily to protect objects of art, but to protect the Army's reputation in connection with such objects, the Army cannot afford to antagonise local feeling, religious, cultural or whatnot, by maltreating monuments in a country which we eventually have to run, nor to outrage world sentiment, and earn a name for vandalism when it is fighting for civilisation. The Army's good name can only be protected by protecting the monuments and works of art, which is where we come in. That result has been admirably achieved in Europe, and we cannot make a less good show in the east and inside our own empire. I'm sure you'll find it the most interesting job and well worth waiting for, even though the wait will be longer than either of us hoped...
Finn McCahon-Jones: So, the heroics of protecting treasures, yes, but also a jolly good spot of PR. I wondered what Elizabeth thought Gilbert might have made of the idea that the army was perhaps more interested in protecting their reputation than the monuments and artefacts. Elizabeth Meers:
Oh, 50/50, I think because he had made a career of the army so, he was supporting them as well. And he had a great desire for, you know, all monuments, art and artefacts, and it was his interest so on that respect, you know, it was 50/50.
Finn McCahon-Jones: I'm not quite sure what I was expecting Elizabeth's reaction would be to that information, but the fact that she was so unfazed by the idea that he could be committed to protecting both the Army's reputation, and protecting arts and culture makes a lot of sense, especially when you dig into why he was considered the right man for the job in the first place.
Though the army may not have had the purest of intentions. We can see that Gilbert gave his all to prepare for this important work. He asked to spend several weeks at other museums and libraries here in Aotearoa to prepare for his posting, and to find out more about the significance of the items he'd be protecting. Being a monuments man was his headline act, for sure, but he did so much more, although judging by that very measured newspaper article about his work in Singapore, I get the feeling boasting wasn't really his thing.
Anyway, he was far too busy being an artist, an author, philosopher, ethnologist, ornithologist, palaeontologist, physiologist, scientist, zoologist, you get the gist. He was passionately curious about the world around him.
Now I want to tell you more about his truly amazing life and work. So let's start at the beginning. His story begins in 1890 in York, England, when a baby was born in a house opposite a museum, fittingly. I mean, of course he was…The second of eight children, Gilbert and his family emigrated to New Zealand when he was just two years old.
Fast forward a few years, and after a stint as a teacher and then an assistant headmaster at Nelson College, an assistant curator position opened up at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. He worked there from 1914 to 1924 but of course, the war intervened. Gilbert joined the New Zealand Field Artillery in 1912, and later served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.
My first stop to find out more about Gilbert's Army career was to check the Online Cenotaph. It's a memorial resource the museum runs for everybody to use. You can basically jump on the site and look up war records, photos and other stories about people who served with the New Zealand Armed Forces. While in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force during World War One, Gilbert was sent to fight for Britain and found himself involved in the disastrous Passchendaele campaign in Belgium. While there, he contracted acute bronchitis and was sent to hospital in England. His illness was so severe that he wasn't expected to survive, but he managed to pull through. When he did recover, he was identified as a good candidate to become a divisional Education Officer. This meant he'd stay on in England, and was put in charge of training New Zealand soldiers who were either injured or returning home on how to build a life for themselves outside the war. The army was impressed with Gilbert's service. He was awarded an Order of the British Empire or OBE in 1919.
Voice actor: In recognition of valuable services rendered in connection with the war. Finn McCahon-Jones:
He served in both world wars and certainly excelled in his duties. So it makes a lot of sense to me that he'd be up for a gig that protected arts and culture, and made the army look good. Gilbert returned to Aotearoa in January 1920 but didn't step into his role at the Auckland Museum straight away. For four years, he continued his job at Canterbury Museum, where he leaned into his passion for zoology, undertaking extensive fieldwork around the South Island, the Coromandel Peninsula, the Chatham Islands and the sub-Antarctic islands dotted between New Zealand and Antarctica.
During this time, he authored a massive 26 zoological papers. These included studies on marine and freshwater fish and crayfish, and wrote an important series on New Zealand chilopoda, a type of centipede. It's still considered a major work today. In 1922 he worked on a study of native frogs that led to the rare species, Leiopelma Archeyi, being named in his honour. Today, the species is commonly nicknamed Archey's frog. It's actually Aotearoa’s smallest native frog. It's teeny, just under four centimetres, so about the size of the tip of your thumb. A nocturnal master of camouflage with brown and green markings that blend really well into the forest floor.
As Gilbert trudged through the bush and explored our southernmost islands, the post war mood of the country was a sombre one. The Great War cast a long shadow over the decade. Many returning soldiers carried both physical and emotional scars. In Aotearoa, the population was growing steadily despite the war and the disastrous Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, which killed around 9000 people in just two months. Here in Auckland, locals were crying out for a memorial to remember the more than 18,000 Kiwis who had died, and of those, almost a third had no known graves. They'd been buried half a world away from their grieving families.
The Auckland War Memorial Museum was built by, and for a community that needed a place to remember those who had died. Before that, the museum, which was actually Aotearoa’s first museum, was housed in several different spots around Tamaki Makaurau. In 1852 it was a tiny setup in downtown Auckland, beginning life in a two-room farm cottage in Grafton. Over the years, it moved to several other sites, until, under the guidance of curator Thomas Cheeseman, its collections rapidly expanded and more space was needed. So, in 1921 a worldwide architectural competition to design a grand Museum and war memorial was launched.
Voice actor: Competitive designs for the Auckland War Memorial Museum to be erected in the Auckland Domain are hereby invited returnable to Mr. T, F, Cheeseman Princes Street Auckland on or before 28 February 1922. Finn McCahon-Jones:
There were 74 entries. But ultimately, the design by three young Auckland architects, Grierson, Amer and Draffin collected first prize. The newspapers celebrated the fact that these local architects had all served in the Great War. But sadly, Thomas Cheeseman, who started the project, died in 1923 after giving 50 years’ service to Auckland Museum. And this is where Gilbert re-enters the frame, packing up his field kit and tramping out of the bush to take over as the new head of Auckland Museum.
Imagine being tasked with moving a museum steeped in tradition and full of objects into a brand new, spacious, modern building. That was the challenge Gilbert faced, he had to decide how to furnish the new galleries, organise and display the extensive collection, develop research facilities and education programs. He was an incredibly busy man, filling his days to the brim, replying to every letter he received from the public, and often leaving the museum late at night. He saw through the completion of the build and its grand opening in 1929 and that's the museum we know today, overlooking the harbour sitting proudly atop Pukekawa, Auckland Domain.
When Gilbert took the role at Auckland Museum, it was a time of great change. He recognised that objects were more than just colonial commodities, and he started to bring a new perspective to how we understand and present the collections. It's clear from Gilbert's actions that he was keenly interested in ensuring that the museum acknowledged respected and preserved taonga Māori. He joined the Māori Arts and Crafts Board in 1927 and was quoted in the Auckland Star newspaper as saying:
Voice actor: We want the Māori people to look upon the Auckland Museum as the treasure house of their relics. It belongs as much to them as to us. Finn McCahon-Jones:
That was pretty progressive at the time. We know now that tangata whenua should determine where taonga Māori belongs. Gilbert knew the importance of working with communities to shape and tell Aotearoa’s history. He wanted to do things differently. It's apparent he was ahead of his time in that regard, showing great respect for taonga and their communities. Voice actor: The museum is not to have and to hold but to study what we have. Finn McCahon-Jones:
Gilbert brought a nuance to the museum and collections from a cultural, scientific and social point of view. Something that becomes clear from the many, many newspaper cuttings about him is that he was highly determined to learn and share as much as he could about Te Ao Māori, the Māori world, especially taonga Māori. To find out about the history of the museum's collecting and research, we spoke to Nigel Borell. Ko tona whakapapa Pirirakau, Ngai Te Rangi, Ngati Ranginui,
Te Whakatohea, Te Rarawa, Ngati Apakura me Ngati Matawhaiti. This is how he sees things have changed, a century on from Gilbert becoming Museum Director. Nigel Borell:
My name is Nigel Borell, Curator Taonga Māori here at Tamaki Paenga Hira. Yeah, I think our acquisition of taonga Māori, generally speaking, has always been really strong. Even prior to Gilbert Archey’s arrival, there was always a real momentum around collecting and collectorship and patronage in terms of taonga Māori. So, you know, often collecting by type and ferocious collecting would sum up the way in which the collection is characterised in those early days. And I suppose under Gilbert's watch, there is a desire to have more focused collecting, and perhaps collecting with some type of arc to it. The collecting of taonga Māori has always been a bit of a tricky space, because when we look at the files and when we look at the history of some of those, those collecting practices, the ethical and moral ways in which objects were collected and taonga were acquired, can reveal some really, very stark circumstances and ones that don't sit well with us today, ethically, and some practices that we would never do any longer. And it's interesting to say that, because you when you read some of the object files that sit with taonga that were acquired in and around that time, some of them have very interesting and revealing paths in terms of how they've been acquired. So, the thing about working in a museum is that we sort of inherit those histories, and so it's how we want to view them, or how we want to unravel them or speak about them, or facilitate conversations around them, or even facilitate repatriation, are all part of being a museum curator and collector in the present era.
Finn McCahon-Jones: But what does Nigel think of Gilbert's work in Māori research? Nigel Borell:
I suppose when we think about his research with taonga Māori and Māori art more generally, he made a really important contribution to the visibility of those art forms for Māori, but also a place to land in terms of that research, and it becomes a benchmark for later researchers and historians. And of course, like all things, the nuanced way in which research starts to delve into the details of those different art disciplines starts to occur in later researchers and in later writers. And then, of course, the opportunity for Māori to talk about, from a Māori perspective, the knowledge and understanding of those taonga which relate to the culture is a different form of research, again, and you know, it's Gilbert's offerings sit within that wider context. You know, today we have an appreciation of what those taonga represent and how they're understood, which is deeper, more meaningful, but perhaps is more accurate as well, to to the culture and to the to the work that it's presented. But there's no denying Gilbert's contribution to that research was founding, and his his publication record attests to that.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Although he came to ethnology late in life, Gilbert's work was highly regarded. He wrote popular handbooks such as South Sea Folk and Sculpture and Design, an outline of Māori Art. His final book, Whaowhia: Māori Art and its Artists was published in 1977. Nigel Borell:
Even in the late 90s, when I was doing my undergrad study. It was one of those few publications that you could source to actually to make note of those carvings and where they're from, and and his analysis of it wasn't always vast, but his ability to cite them and to see them as important and and see them within a, I suppose, a collection of Māori making, whether it's whakairo, whether it's by type of object, was really important. And it sort of reminded me in the 90s, even just the big gaps in between those publications appearing, and his were really important.
Finn McCahon-Jones: When you enter the museum via the original entrance, you walk through the Grand Foyer, and you can see taonga Māori in pride of place in Te Marae Atea Māori Court. Back in the 1920s when the museum was being built, Gilbert would have been involved in discussions around how to accommodate these taonga, especially the Whare Runanga, Hotonui, the meeting house, and the great waka taua war canoe, Te Toki a Tapiri. Nigel Borell:
But really it's the practicalities of the scale of those items demand and command certain spaces. And Gilbert would have come to that conclusion quite early on, even with architects and with the planning and the thinking of the museum as it was being created and opened, that there's nowhere else for them to sit. So, they've sort of selected, they've spoken, and decided that that's where they will sit, in a way which I quite like. But I also love the fact that when the museum was being constructed, that the long term deposit or loan of the Hotonui Meeting House was already in hand with descendants, with taipari whanau descendants, and so when the construction of the museum's taking place, that cavern that Hotonui sits within was constructed specifically to house Hotonui and to speak to our public as they're walking into the building, and I love the fact that that remains. That's like a legacy statement that the museum can still own today. And often, you know, we anecdotally talk about the Māori Court being the heart of the museum, and it has that sort of conversation and legacy when people think about this space, but quite literally, it situates itself that very way as well when you enter the museum. So, it feels like an apt way to think about not just the Māori Court, but the sort of the manawa or the heartbeat of the museum sort of pulsates outwards from there.
Finn McCahon-Jones: A review in the New Zealand Journal of history from 1978 notes that: Voice actor: He stands apart from his generation of scholars in one important respect, he was willing to credit to Māori artists the artistic achievements which he saw and admired in their art, Finn McCahon-Jones: Because Archey had so many talents and passions, we've dedicated a room in the museum to telling the story of his life.
Jacqui Armitage: I've been coming here my whole life, so it's a special place. Finn McCahon-Jones: That's Jacqui. She's been one of our volunteer guides for nearly a decade. Jacqui’s showing me around a hidden room at the museum, which has been staged as a reconstruction of Gilbert's office. Jacqui Armitage:
It's all done in a 1920s/1930s style, with the green walls and lots of old furniture. There are glass fronted cabinets with all kinds of exhibits in them from the skeleton of a tailless cat, to birds eggs and all those sorts of things. There's also some taxidermied birds as well. I think there's a kiwi and a tui and a kereru. And then, of course, on the walls are lots of pictures, photographs, mostly of things that have happened here in the past. There's pictures of Gilbert Archey, there's moa pictures, as well as some drawings of the original building and a picture of the three architects as well, which is really nice to have them up there on the wall too. There's labels and stuff. But we also have a couple of modern things in here, which are quite a contrast. So, we've got moa bones, and then we've got a 3D version of a moa head, and something really special on the wall by what would have been Archey's desk, Gilbert Archey's desk, is a wooden measurer, and it is for measuring moa bones, because that was his specialty for quite some time.
Finn McCahon-Jones: Yes, yet another specialty of Gilbert's, researching those mighty birds, the moa. Jacqui Armitage:
So, it's like a slide rule, I guess you'd call it. So, it's probably about a metre and a half long and has a big groove down the middle of it and a sliding piece that he can, you know, have the bones, you know, right up against it, so he gets an accurate measurement. Apparently, he made it himself. So, he's quite a handy sort of a person. It's a bit of a treasure to have, really Finn McCahon-Jones:
For me, looking through his reconstructed office full of artefacts and his notebooks, was almost more like looking through a reconstruction of his relentlessly curious mind. And from what his granddaughter Elizabeth told me, Gilbert was inquisitive right till the end. Remember that really useful book Nigel had studied at the university in the 90s. It turns out, Gilbert's final act of sharing his knowledge was just in time.
Elizabeth Meers: After he retired, he spent a lot of time on producing his master work Whaowhia, and that was completed and sitting on the hall table, tied up with string and addressed to the publishers, stamped to be sent the next day, and he died that night. Finn McCahon-Jones:
Gilbert Archey died in October 1974, 50 years after he joined Tāmaki Paenga Hira. Under his leadership, Auckland Museum became recognised as a model for modern museums. His work, and that of all the Monuments Men and Women, was crucial in setting the stage for the protection of cultural heritage in war zones, and their legacy continues to influence preservation efforts today. Gilbert Archey spent his life preserving, protecting and sharing stories. Now, every week, digging through files in the museum library, his granddaughter Elizabeth is doing this too to share his story.
I'm Finn McCahon-Jones, and that was Soldier, Curator, Monuments Man. This podcast was brought to you by Auckland Museum supported by the Stevenson Foundation. It was written and produced by Laura Skerritt and Stephanie Strock. Sound Design by Sara O'Brien, voice acting by Ian Proctor, Joseph Main and Adam Burrell. The executive producer was Teresa Cowie from Connect Content.
Thanks to our guests, Elizabeth Meers, Jacqueline Armitage, Pia Gahagan, Madison Pine and Nigel Borell. For a link to the original blog post and to find out more about Gilbert Archey, head to the link in our show notes. In our next episode, we go for a night out at the Orange Ballroom, or the Orange as it was known, to learn how it became such an iconic space for people to come together and connect through music and dancing. Kath McGhie:
Men were always suited up in beautiful suits. They always had quite a strict code, and they wouldn't have been able to afford to buy half of the stuff. So, they used to share the tie. So, one of them would wear the tie to get themselves in through the door, and then they'd go around and then find a window, and then throw the tie out the window, and then the next guy would pick it up, and then, and that's how they used to get themselves in.