Resource Spotlight | Auckland Art Gallery presents Lindauer Maori Portraits & Visitors' Book
LINDAUER MAŌRI PORTRAITS
In 2008, Auckland Art Gallery received a grant from the Department of Internal Affairs' Community Partnership Fund to embark on the Lindauer Māori Portraits and Visitors' Book Online Project. The grant enabled the Gallery to develop a website to highlight Gottfried Lindauer's 19th-century portraits of Māori from New Zealand collections and the accompanying Visitors' Books from the period.
The Māori Language Commission Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori partnered with the Gallery on this project to provide language services to transcribe and translate the entries in the historic Lindauer Art Gallery Māori Visitors' Book for the new website. The site also provides an online forum for the sharing of information about the portrait sitters.
The goal of the Whakamīharo Lindauer Online kaupapa is to make accessible Lindauer's portraits of Māori, alongside both historic and contemporary responses to the portraits. The Gallery has worked collaboratively with descendants and the wider community to provide a central repository of information on Lindauer's Māori portraits, in particular the significance of Auckland's Partridge Collection. The Whakamīharo Lindauer Online website was launched in June 2010 and is intended to benefit all generations of New Zealanders and to actively educate and respond to the growing global interest in Lindauer and things Māori.
Awards
Best Diversity Initiative 2010, Australia and New Zealand Internet Best Practice Awards
Special Technology and Innovation Award, New Zealand Museum Awards 2011
Behind the Brush
In 2013 Auckland Art Gallery's portraits of Māori by Gottfried Lindauer were the subject of a documentary series screening on Māori Television called Behind the Brush. A second series of Behind the Brush screened in 2014.
