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So it all started with, uh, Rachel from the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. Uh, acting on behalf of the New Zealand AIDS Memorial Court. Contacted Papa in 2008. I think it was a phone call or an email to start with and said, you know, would be interested in the quote coming here. And, um, I said, Well, can you write us a formal letter so we can consider it because it is quite a serious offer? I mean, it's a large collection, and we have to think a lot of things through. So she did write [00:00:30] to us formally. It's a beautiful letter. I just read it the other day. It's about a three page letter, um, describing the history and significance of the quilt, and it's actually it's actually a lovely document in its own right, so that will go on the archive anyway. So I, um, I tabled that letter with my colleagues, and, uh, we all talked about how we wanted to bring it to Papa, but that everybody needed to know what that meant. And what it meant was that the quilt could no longer be so accessible in the way that it was, [00:01:00] it could no longer be in church halls, on school floors. It couldn't be out on the grass because we had to apply museum standards. So the quilts, if they came into the museum, would be treated in quite a different way than how they had been. They'd been a very public collection. So I explained all that to Rachel and she went away and talked to everybody in that sector, and they all agreed it was too soon. It was too soon to actually give up [00:01:30] the life of the quilts, the life that they'd had. They still needed to be out in the public. So I said, That's cool. Just come back to us when you're ready, and then the next step was, I'm pretty sure it was at out games last year. You said Gareth, that you know, how are you guys going with thinking about the quilt coming to te papa? So I'm pretty sure that you actually kicked off the conversation again, and then that's when Michael approached us, and that's when I first met Michael. We had some wonderful emails and phone calls, and then [00:02:00] Michael came to Papa with you. That day and brought the one block to show us all. And that was my team. That was clear. And my boss and Tanya Walters, the collection manager, was there anybody else there that day? I think that might have been it. And we just had a wonderful time talking about the possibilities of bringing the quilt into the museum. So that was last year, 2011 Had you come across the quilt before those, uh, correspondence with with Rachel and also talking to Michael? Uh, only [00:02:30] in an international sense. I was really aware of the project internationally that I hadn't personally encountered the New Zealand quilt before, So it was wonderful to know the depth and breadth of it. I was really excited. So when you first saw a panel or a block, how did you feel? Uh, well, obviously there's an emotional and a physical response, and the emotional one is how everybody feels. [00:03:00] You feel very moved and you realise how intimate and personal they are and that time doesn't change anything. As soon as you see a name and a person being honoured by their loved ones, you feel a connection and you feel grief and sorrow. Even though you don't know them, it's very palpable. It's a really visceral experience. The curator in me, of course, immediately starts to worry about the physicality of the object, how [00:03:30] big it is, how many different materials it's made of how some of the materials look a bit unstable, might have come unpicked over time. Might be a bit dirty because they've been lying on grass. So I think these two things at once. Well, I thought those two things at once when I saw it I. I still am amazed by the scale of them, and I think that's a really huge A critical part of them is the scale in terms of impact. [00:04:00] One of the ones that really gets me is Peter, who was the the first panel, and I just I just get shivers when I When I I see that it's interesting because I don't know I. I think I my eye just picks up on the little things. Actually, I just I think I just I'm really drawn to those tiny things where you see other personalities coming through and their longing and love for people. Oh, [00:04:30] and the idea that well say with Peter's panel that it was somebody in the late eighties that wanted to remember him in this particular way and how that's kind of travelled through time. Yeah, and also how cute A lot of those memories are things like teddy bears and, um, soft toys and heart shapes and stars and, you know, pretty sort of almost hopeful positive things, like rainbows and lots [00:05:00] of colour. They were incredibly optimistic, actually, which has surprised me when I first saw them. And also there's a lot of recurring motifs. And just like, you know, everyday life has been documented on quite a few of the panels, so they're not. I mean, when I first heard about the quilt, I thought, Well, they'll all be beautifully made by sewers, people who know how to sew. I just assumed that all the sewers and families and friends got the job making [00:05:30] the panels, but I quickly realised that anybody made panels, and some of them are just made with stuck together with glue, you know, and then people have used every type of object they can possibly get their hands on. It's not organic, and everybody's had to go, which is not normal in quilt making. Normally, um, people have a bit of sewing skill in behind them before they start a quilt. So that's why I really love them as well. Everybody had to go and joined in the three dimensional aspect [00:06:00] of a lot of these quilts. Like we we're in front of, uh, one here with a big hasty camera. Uh, that's Graham Graham. Hasty haste. Graham Haste. Born 1952 died in 1988 and, uh, his family and friends created a three dimensional camera I. I presume he was a photographer or interested in photography. So this three dimensional camera is about 10 centimetres deep, and it's made from what looks like to be quite [00:06:30] an unstable rubber foam, which will deteriorate over time. So this particular panel is of concern to us, and we might actually try and isolate it out a bit from the rest of the block when we fold it up like, you know, acid free materials just so that if it does degrade, it won't affect the rest of the block. Because, generally speaking, people have used good, long lasting materials like cotton, but occasionally people have used a modern sort of synthetics, which won't last like, [00:07:00] um, like laminated paper. It's a bit of a problem for us in the museum to keep it stable. So even though the museum has a really good environment and we try and save everything for for for posterity, some things will degrade. It's beyond our control. But I think it's the minority of the quilts. Most of them are pretty robust. How? How do you document something that is three dimensional? So, for instance, this camera, how do you physically write down this as 10 [00:07:30] centimetres high? Yeah, because on our database we do all our measurements. It's all recorded. Then we describe each quilt. Uh, yeah, so that's part of my job is to physically understand it. But because the quilt website itself is so detailed, I haven't replicated all the information about what is known about each person. Basically, the two websites were just link together, So when the papa puts the quilts online, [00:08:00] you'll be able to see our description of them. But you'll also be able to link in to the the AIDS Quilt website and get deeper information about each panel because I imagine quite a lot of these panels will have, um, elements that are known to the people that made the quilt but may not necessarily resonate in 50 years time. Are you going to try and approach people and get as much [00:08:30] information about the panels as possible? Or are you just going to document as as as what? You see? I think what we document, what we see now. But, uh, we hope because of the accessibility of our collections online that people will keep us up to date or come to us and reconnect with their panels over the years. And also, uh, Kevin, that looks after the quilt website hopes the same that people will keep coming to him [00:09:00] to update. But we'll only go out proactively, probably to talk to people if we're gonna put when we put them on display and need to know a wee bit more. Probably for now, we'll just understand them as they are now. But we welcome any information, and we will add it to the database whenever it comes in. So just getting back to that meeting where Michael brought the the quilt in to show you [00:09:30] what were your kind of discussions after that meeting. What, What? What was going through everyone's minds? Well, we were all really excited and positive, but we knew that there would be conservation issues. So what what we did? The first thing we did was as a history and Pacific team, because we're one big team. It's about well, it was about eight of us. We had an acquisitions meeting, which we do every week, and we tabled the quilts and we talked about them, and we all agreed as a team that they were [00:10:00] of national significance and should be collected. So that's the first step. That's a a discussion. So then it was my job to actually write a formal proposal for to be circulated to other parts of te papa for assessment and approval. So I did all the formal writing up of the project to I had to justify it, talk about its significance and its history and how it fits into [00:10:30] te Papa's collection overall. So I did all that work. I got signed off from my colleagues and then that went to our collection development manager. And then she made sure that that proposal was all kosher. And then she sent it off to the conservation department for their assessment. And the conservatives were were then concerned with the actual materiality and the condition of the quilts and their long term survival. What were the chances of them actually [00:11:00] surviving? And that proposal was also considered by our collection management team who had to find the storage space. And those two were the key issues. So everybody understood the significance. There was never any debate over that. Everybody totally understood. They were. They should be in a museum. That was fine. But it was the size of them and the condition of them that we had to carefully and quietly work through. And that took us probably nearly a year. So we had to find [00:11:30] a space. We actually don't have enough room in our textile store. We've actually don't have this type of room. Um, but in our large history store at Tory Street, um, we found room up there. We found enough in the shelving system. So these, actually, even though they're textiles, they actually won't live in the textile collection. They'll be in the the Greater History collection. So once we realised that there was room, then the next step was to bring a conservator to [00:12:00] Auckland so she could spend a day with him and really think through all the issues and ramifications of bringing material like this into the museum, because all storage and all treatment and all care over the years costs thousands of dollars. It's like, um, basically it's like buying a house and filling it up with stuff and it's there till the end of time. Somebody's got to pay the rent. Somebody's got to pay the rates So it's a very extensive [00:12:30] process to look after large objects. So we treat it really seriously because te papa will be here for hundreds of years, fingers crossed until the end of time. So once we commit to collecting objects, we commit to their care forever, so they'll live way beyond me. So that's why it's always a group decision. It's always very carefully thought through. We're spending public money. I mean the taxpayer funds, the storage and all [00:13:00] the staff resource, a lot of the staff resource. So we have to be very careful that it's the right thing to do and so we worked all through that um, the conservator wrote up a report. The collection manager found the space. And then, uh, our collection development manager brought all the people's comments together and said, Yeah, we can approve this. We can move forward. And then it was signed off at that level, And then it [00:13:30] went to the gift, which Michael assigned, and now it is legally ours. So te papa now legally owns the actual physical objects. But we share, you know, share guardianship over the intellectual knowledge and the emotions and the the spirituality of the quilts are shared. You mentioned that these will be stored in, uh, in in some kind of environment, a history environment. Can you [00:14:00] give me an idea about what kind of conditions they'll be living living in in terms of temperature and light? So we try and keep our store rooms at about 21 to 22 degrees, and I think it's about 50% relative humidity, so it's quite a dry, warm environment. Um, the key thing is no moisture, no light, no food. Um, well, aerated. So it's a very stable environment, and it's it's we've [00:14:30] It's an international standard. That's where objects don't degrade in those conditions. Or maybe it's 55% relative humidity, sort of in there. I mean, New Zealand is a very humid country, so we do put quite a lot of control back a house into the storage areas and they will be folded. But not as much as they were in the past. I think they'll probably be folded, maybe into quarters. Some of them will be rolled, but they'll always be interleaved with [00:15:00] acid free tissue or acid free, which is a great material that you sometimes see in, um, buildings. I think it's a very robust, acid free material, so the quilt will be very comfortable and sometimes we call it intensive care. Imagine you've a patient and you've gone to hospital and you've been treated with gloves and loving care. And the sheets are all beautifully crisp and clean. It's a bit like that. It's a bit like going into hospital permanently, and the staff will wear gloves [00:15:30] when they handle the objects and they'll be stored in a relaxed manner so that there won't be all the folds that you can see now. Things will just be a bit more relaxed. I mean, there'll still be a few crinkles, but the crinkles will slowly relax out, and will the panels be cleaned? I. I think what they'll do first is stabilise the ones that are most problematic about the camera. I think there's too much to actually clean, and also you [00:16:00] don't really want to lose too much of the patina of their age. I mean, for 20 years they've been displayed in spaces where they have gained a bit of dirt. That's OK. They've had a life. These This is what we would call social history. These objects have had a life. The wear and tear is part of the story. If you make them pristine, you're taking away part of their history. You're taking away the way they were used and loved and appreciated. I think basically, [00:16:30] we just treat things that have become unstable. Or maybe there might be a really unsightly stain we might clean away. But we try not to intervene too much because you don't want to lose that part of their story, their life cycle. I'm really interested in how you've been talking, and these panels seem to work on so many different levels. Um, social history personal history. National history. Um, do you have any kind [00:17:00] of end comments for I suppose this is one part. This is a an ending of one part of the journey, but also the beginning of another. Well, I mean I. I hope that we'll be able to get the one line as soon as possible. And I hope we'll be able to do more public programmes around them. Either bring them out like this for just, um, a few hours or actually display them for a long period period of time. So I'm hoping that we can work towards that in our programme here at Papa and find the right space for them and interpret them in a really meaningful way. [00:17:30] It gets a lot of visitors in to see them. So we we we do a lot of work internally because you've only met probably the museum, part of the museum. There's also another whole huge area of the museum. That's all front of house that makes the exhibitions and does all that work. So I'll you know, we'll talk to them about how we can get them out on display and just remind people that you know material culture [00:18:00] like this is really important because, as I said before at the There's all the intangible, um, culture and behind these so which is wonderful. But the tangible culture there's no other way to experience it is there. But being in front of it, seeing the texture, the actual work that's gone into them, even the craziness of the camera here in front of you, it's [00:18:30] a It's a pretty amazing experience that you just can't get any other way. And that's what museums can give to people. They can give them a real experience. So that's what I hope we can do over the next few years is give whatever it is this real experience.
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