"The mural's value far outstripped the building's worth": art, architecture and protest at Aniwaniwa

Abstract

John Scott's Āniwaniwa Visitor Centre is lucky to get a mention in many of the reports and rememberings of the removal of Colin McCahon's Urewera Mural by Tūhoe activist Te Kaha in 1997. The focus at the time, and even in subsequent retellings, was on the artwork and the personalities involved (including McCahon himself despite dying ten years before the removal). Even when discussed in the context of the performance of protest (or cultural activism as some would have it), the contribution of architecture to this episode is either ignored or downplayed (or not understood). This paper explores the role that architecture played in the 1997 removal and subsequent return of McCahon's mural. It builds on earlier research into how protests played out architecturally in the 1880s (Parihaka) and 1980s (Waitangi), primarily through media reports of the protest act, but also looking at how this has been treated by academic literature. While John Scott's Visitor Centre was the initial physical site of the act of protest, there are a number of spaces at play (the Urewera itself, the Auckland City Art Gallery where the mural reappears, and the undisclosed location where the mural was hidden). The relationships between these spaces reinforce the performance of protest - providing an architectural landscape to New Zealand's most famous art heist.