City Gallery

Past event

Remembering and Forgetting Difficult Histories: The New Zealand Wars

6pm Sun 24 October

This event has reached in-person capacity at Alert Level 2, but will be live streamed on our Facebook page. Respond to the Facebook Event to be notified when this event is happening. 


Sites of enormous violence can be places of memory embedded in the land, but also of silence and forgetting. The ‘difficult histories’ of the New Zealand Wars are remembered by Māori through many forms – including art and sculpture, while ignored, or at best, mythologised by many Pākehā.

In this talk Professor Joanna Kidman (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Toa Rangatira) of Victoria University of Wellington and historian Dr Vincent O’Malley examine the role of memory and forgetting in the context of these defining nineteenth-century New Zealand conflicts, drawing on the findings from their Marsden Fund project on these themes. 

This is an in-person event but as we have limited capacity under Alert Level 2,  it will be live streamed and recorded by Story is King. The live stream will be available to watch on the City Gallery Wellington’s Facebook Page. Contact us for more details.

Special thanks to Bridget Williams Books.