Launch of our full Image Collection Online

We are thrilled to announce the completion of a major project to digitise our image collection items. You can now access over 12,000 historically significant images catalogue records via the Museum’s online database, now available here.

This exciting project was made possible through the support of Lottery Environment and Heritage funding, and took 14 months to complete. While the collection items remain in secure storage at the Air Force Museum of New Zealand until Lyttelton Museum has a new building of its own, we hope that the community will enjoy exploring online what were until now hidden treasures.

The images are of photographs, paintings and drawings of the Lyttelton/Whakaraupō area and community dating from around 1860 through to the 21st Century, and include historic Lyttelton streets and buildings, gatherings and parades; the two World Wars periods; harbour shipping and maritime events, landscapes and panoramas.

In addition to Lottery Environment and Heritage, I would like to acknowledge technician Amy Ryan, committee members Murray McGuigan and Lizzie Meek, and New Zealand Micrographic Services (NZMS) for their hard work and commitment to completing this complex project.

We encourage visitors to the catalogue to actively contribute and help grow our knowledge through the ‘Add Comment’ function, and we’re excited to see what new information people can provide about the pictures to help us build our repository of harbour stories.

Along with our commitment to continue with online and pop-up exhibitions, the Museum committee is continuing to work on a fundraising campaign for a new Museum building on London Street in Lyttelton which will celebrate and protect the taonga and stories of Lyttelton, its port, and the wider Lyttelton Harbour Te Whakaraupō communities. We will provide more updates about this exciting endeavour in the coming months.

To celebrate the launch of the online repository, the Museum is running a series of online exhibitions called ‘LocalEyes’, featuring images from the collection selected by Lyttelton locals. The first guest curator was well known New Zealander and Lyttelton local Joe Bennett - check out Joe’s LocalEyes exhibition here.