World War One Memorial Project

Discussion (5 posts |  Only members can post. Join?)

About World War One Memorial Project

Te Papa is looking for photos of New Zealand’s World War One memorials for its upcoming 20th Century History exhibition. If you’d like to contribute, get snapping and post your pictures in this group.

Te Papa is currently working on a major new long-term exhibition focussed on New Zealand in the 20th century, scheduled to open in late 2009.

One of the topics we’ll be exploring in the exhibition will be the impact of World War One deaths on New Zealand society.

More than 18,000 New Zealand soldiers died overseas during the war, but very few of their bodies came back, so the way in which their sacrifice was memorialised was very important for their family and friends back home. All over New Zealand, communities responded by building memorials to their local dead: more than 500 statues, obelisks, arches, civic buildings, and other monuments were dedicated to their memory.

We’d like to commemorate the spirit behind these memorials by asking communities of today to photograph their local World War One memorials. We will then present these photos − as a large-scale slideshow − in the 20th Century History exhibition.

If you’d like to contribute a photograph of your local World War One memorial to the exhibition, it’s easy.

To make the memorials look their best, the images need to be high-resolution (the minimum is 1024x768 pixels; more would be even better), in portrait format, preferably on their own, without people (though you’re welcome to send us lots of other kinds of shots as well). We’ve posted some examples to show you what we’re looking for.

Check out the topics above to find out more about technical specs and how to locate your local memorial.

As yet, we have no idea what kind of response we’ll get to this project. We reserve the right to the final selection of images used on the floor.

If you have any questions about this project, post a response here, or contact us at: nzhistory@tepapa.govt.nz

For more information on the NZ History exhibition, have a look at Te Papa’s blog page.

http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/category/20th-century-history/