Wednesday 23 July 2025, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
You are invited to the annual general meeting of the Friends of the Turnbull Library. After the meeting, Helen McCracken will discuss how heritage organisations safeguarded their national collections by evacuating cultural treasures during the Second World War.
Annual General Meeting 2025
The Friends of the Turnbull Library is a national organisation, supporting the work and activities of the Alexander Turnbull Library since 1939. You are invited to the Annual General Meeting of the Friends.
Safeguarding national collections during WWII
Following the meeting, there will be an opportunity to hear from heritage advisor and researcher, Helen McCracken. This talk will provide an insight into the people and institutions who, fearful of an attack during the Second World War, undertook the largest evacuation of national treasures in this country’s history,
“For much in the library, as for other records, to be too late once would be too late for ever.”
— Memorandum from Clyde Romer Hughes Taylor, Chief Librarian of the Alexander Turnbull Library to Joseph Heenan the Undersecretary of Internal Affairs from Librarian, 23 October 1940.
I.A.93/601 Alexander Turnbull Library, Emergency Safeguards, R19168105, Archives New Zealand.
Disaster and Conflict Resilient Heritage was the theme of this year’s International Day of Monuments and Sites on 18 April, led by the International Council on Monuments and Sites.
A Friends of the Turnbull Library event
The Friends of the Turnbull Library, Ngā Hoa o te Whare Pukapuka Turnbull, offers a monthly programme of public talks that are free to all. The public programme highlights the work of researchers who draw on Turnbull material for their projects.
Friends of the Turnbull Library
About the speaker
Helen McCracken has worked in cultural heritage in New Zealand for over 30 years. Since 2010 she has worked at Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Helen is also a PhD candidate at the Joint Centre for Disaster Research, Massey University, looking at the existing planning for cultural heritage in relation to emergencies in Aotearoa New Zealand.
More information can be found here.