Terri Elder will be facilitating this session on Tuesday 17th November, at 2pm, in the Council Chambers, 6th floor, Registry.

During the first 100 years of its existence, it would appear that the University of Canterbury concentrated on commissioning official portraits as its primary means of collecting art. As a result, our ‘rogues gallery’ in the council room on level 6 of the Registry, includes portraits of 12 former vice chancellors, many painted by the top Canterbury portrait artists of the time, including Petrus van der Velden, Archibald Nicoll, Elizabeth Kelly, William Sutton, and Martin Ball.

The subjects of those portraits have without a doubt shaped the development of the university. The likes of Bickerton, Macmillan Brown, Hight, and Hulme are well known names both in terms of the history of our institution and of the local community too, although not always for the best of reasons!

Despite a certain stiffness about them, what the portraits show is that however unwittingly, the University has managed to capture the essence of an institutional memory in the art collection. The collection can tell us about our great teachers, our great students, our buildings, our environment, our triumphs and our failures. In addition, one of the lovely ways we are now able to consider that institutional memory is through our growing collection of applied art objects, such as the University Mace, and numerous mementos of our Coat of arms.

This talk will consider some of the hidden treasures of our Registry, and give participants the opportunity to get up close and personal with a variety of artworks and objects that relate to our institutional memory.

If you wish to attend this session please click here
An Institutional Memory – the treasures of Registry.

Please meet at the Central Library Information Desk just before 2pm.

Thank you.
Maureen