Pages tagged with: exhibition

Between 8 November 1939 and 4 May 1940 more than 2.6 million people visited the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition in Wellington; this represents an average daily attendance of about 17,000 people. The government spent £250,000 – more than $19 million in today's money – on the exhibition.

The centennial celebrations of 1940 marked a century of European effort and progress. Maori history and the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi took a back seat.

The New Zealand Centennial Exhibition ran from 8 November 1939 to 4 May 1940. During this time 2,641,043 people went through the main gates with a daily average attendance of 17,149

Over the 1939/40 summer 2,870,995 people - 200,000 more than the total number who visited the centennial exhibition - spent their pounds and shillings in Playland

The 1940 Centennial, planned for five years and publicly funded, was a deliberate act of national self-definition by the first Labour government.

Despite all the talk of the 'birth of a nation', the place of the Treaty of Waitangi or Māori in the centennial celebrations was less obvious.

A selection of key New Zealand events from 1925

This 40 metre wooden structure modelled on the Eiffel Tower opened at the 1889-1890 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition held in Dunedin.

On 31 March 1889 Gustave Eiffel's famous 300-m tower was officially completed in Paris. Just 8½ months later a 40-m wooden structure modelled on the tower opened at the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin

Coal from the Seddonville State Mine was a centrepiece of the display by the Mines Department in the 1906-07 International Exhibition at Christchurch

This exhibition was a milestone in the Maori cultural renaissance. After being hugely successful in New York, St Louis, San Francisco and Chicago, it returned to tour New Zealand to great acclaim.

By the time it closed in May 1926 the exhibition had attracted over 3.2 million visitors, more than double New Zealand's total population at the time.