DONORS’ EXHIBITION

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 9, Issue 2, 1 October 1976, Page 24

DONORS’ EXHIBITION

This year, for the first time, a special exhibition presented a wide selection of donations to the Library over the preceding fifteen months. It is intended that such an exhibition should become an annual event, as a gesture of appreciation to past benefactors as well as pour encourager les autres. The exhibition was mounted by Tom Wilsted, Manuscripts Librarian, and Jeavons Baillie, Conservation Officer, but almost all senior staff were involved to some degree. The display deliberately concentrated upon a great variety of items to the almost total exclusion of books, with the intention of showing how very widely the Library tries to cast its net in building up research collections covering every aspect of New Zealand history and our way of life at each and every period.

Manuscripts naturally played a prominent part, including material acquired through the WARDOCUMENT project, with paintings and sketches, prints, maps, music, gramophone records, tape recordings, photo-copies, photographs, posters, programmes, postcards and every type of ephemera. As a result of excellent publicity secured by those responsible for mounting the exhibition, including most useful television coverage, an unusually large number of visitors came to view it, many of whom had not been in the Library before. The objective was well achieved, in that the term ‘library material’ now has a much more concrete meaning for several thousand people, at first hand: and, in consequence, many more donations have been received, all in their own way important, whether a quite minor item or a major manuscript collection. Some emphasis had been placed on the policy of securing representative papers of Parliamentarians, including the recently acquired Sir John Marshall papers.

A handsomely-presented brochure, listing all donors of the preceding fifteen months with some introductory comment and indicating how small a selection of material could be shown, was sent to the 566 donors and their families, with an invitation to a special Donors’ Preview, held from 2 p.m.-5 p.m. on Sunday, 13 June, when over 200 took advantage of the opportunity. Library staff were in attendance to assist visitors with any enquiries, and at intervals the Chief Librarian (Mr J. E. Traue) briefly summarized the intention of the occasion. The brochure also accompanied the invitations to the official opening of the exhibition on the following day, Monday, 14 June, at 5.30 p.m. The scores of thousands of donations in the fifty odd years since the death of the founder would now have an aggregate current market value of several millions but their worth cannot be estimated in dollars alone. Gifts have ranged from Sir Joseph Kinsey’s library of 20,000

volumes and the Fleck Bequest of an entire estate of some $50,000, to a single photograph. The Library covers many specialised fields of research although primary emphasis is on every aspect of New Zealand and the whole Pacific area, together with English literature and rare books, including mediaeval manuscripts and the history of printing from the 15th century to the present day. Only by continued active collecting can the Turnbull retain its position as a leading centre of learning.

Sir Alister Mclntosh, when opening the exhibition, emphasized the part the Endowment Trust has to play. ‘ln the last five years the Trust has spent some $75,000 in purchases for the Library’s collections. It has published three books and five sets of colour prints from original paintings in the Library, and has made grants toward overseas travel by staff members carrying out further research.’ The purchases, additional to those normally made by the Library, have included rare books and New Zealand historical paintings and manuscripts. Some have been aided by generous grants from the Lottery Funds and from the T. G. Macarthy Trust. Sir Alister thanked the Friends of the Turnbull Library for so kindly financing both the Donors’ Exhibition functions and also the brochure. He also stressed that the Endowment Trust requires substantial continuing monetary support by way of bequests, donations and grants. Prices have soared, competition by private collectors has increased and ever more important material is coming on the market in consequence. Special purchases must continue to reinforce the many donations of library items.

The Chief Librarian’s speech was so well received by the large audience, and is so particularly apposite for the Friends of the Turnbull Library, that it is printed in full below.

“The exhibition which we are about to open this evening is to honour 566 persons, associations, societies and business firms who have donated objects to the Library’s research collections in the period January 1975 to March 1976. We honour these 566 by name in the exhibition brochure; vicariously we also honour the many thousands more who have donated books, pictures, photographs, maps, prints, newspapers, periodicals and manuscripts from the time of Alexander Turnbull, the many thousands who shared Alexander Turnbull’s belief in the importance of a national research collection for New Zealand, a national research collection which would have a continuing and vital role in interpreting New Zealand’s past to each new generation, which would in Turnbull’s own phrase ‘assist future searchers after the truth’ about our country.

“This exhibition is the first of its kind held by the Library and after the success of our open house for donors yesterday afternoon I think we should give serious consideration to making the donors’ exhibition a regular feature of the Turnbull calendar. The William Andrews Clark Library in Los Angeles has its Founder’s Day as an excuse for a whole

day’s festivities with lunch, dinner and sundry musical and dramatic entertainments. As heirs of a less exuberant tradition than that of Los Angeles I think we could manage a few hours once a year to pay a deserved tribute to our founder and those who continue to build on the foundation he laid, the Library’s donors.

“Today the State and its agencies are the patrons of most of the world’s great libraries and it is almost inevitable that this should be the fate of a mature research library. Running a large library is an expensive hobby and with few exceptions the state is the only body able to marshal the resources now required. But the great libraries were not the creations of state agencies but of individuals and families; of the Turnbulls, Hockens, McNabs, Carters, Greys and Reeds in New Zealand; the Mitchells, Dixsons and Fergusons in Australia; the Huntingtons, Clarks, Morgans, Clements, Bergs, Bancrofts, Newberrys, Wideners in the United States; and in England the Bodleys, Cottons, Pepys, Sloanes and Harleys. But the assumption by the State of the role of patron of the great libraries has not ended the flow of private giving to research libraries. The British Library, the National Libraries of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, the New York Public

Library, the Clements, the Clark, Mitchell, Turnbull, all continue to receive a steady flow of donations and bequests. People continue to believe that they as individuals ought to contribute to the growth of research libraries above and beyond the contributions of the state, just as in countries which provide a level of state welfare services far beyond that of past centuries people continue to contribute as individuals to the welfare of the less fortunate. I believe that there is a relationship and that these two kinds of giving are the obverse and reverse of our humanity. In charity we recognise our common mortality, the inevitability of sickness, pain and death, of the ‘heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to’ and we band together as mortals to ease the common burdens. And if it is from a recognition of our mortality that we give for charity then it is from our recognition of the immortality of the creations of man’s hand and mind that we support great libraries. Shakespeare’s body has long gone, his personality is but a pale shadow, but his creations grow more substantial with each century.

“As animals are driven by a genetic imperative to look to the welfare of the next generation man is driven by a cultural imperative to transmit the experience of the past to future generations. All those who have given objects and money to build the Turnbull collections have responded, even if unconsciously, to that same cultural imperative that built the great libraries of Alexandria and Pergamum, the libraries of the middle ages, the British Museum, the Library of Congress, the

Bibliotheque Nationale, the New York Public Library and the Huntington. “We in New Zealand because of our special historical experience have responded well to the welfare imperative and our record of public and private charity is good, but we have not yet felt the full force of our own cultural imperative. As a colonial outpost of Western European civilisation we have looked elsewhere for the preservation of the records of our Western European past, to the Public Record Office, the British Museum, Oxford and Cambridge. In the uncertain future that faces us as a country cast upon its own resources to make its own way in the world we shall need the self-assurance that a sense of our distinctively New Zealand past can give. Cicero’s comment is as appropriate to a country as it is to an individual: ‘To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be forever a child.’

“For those who feel that in such uncertain times as these research libraries are a cultural luxury, a good thing, but a luxury notwithstanding, I commend the example of Prussia in 1810. Napoleon had crushed the Prussian Army, occupied Berlin, and ruined the economy. The response of the Prussian people was to create a new university, the University of Berlin, to match the great German universities of Heidelberg, Gottingen, Munich and Cologne. In a time of trouble they responded with an act of faith in the creative and renewing power of scholarship. Wilhelm von Humboldt, the great German scientist and the head of the new university, summed up his feelings thus: ‘The state, like the private citizen, always acts wisely and politicly . . . when in times of misfortune it uses its efforts to establish something looking to future good and connects its name with such a work.’ “Our donors have helped to establish ‘something looking to future good’ and have connected their names with such a work.”