The New Zealand Cartoon Archive was launched by New Zealand Prime Minister Rt Hon. Jim Bolger on 1 April 1992. Here he fills in the dots of a caricature of himself at the opening ceremony.

In 2005 the New Zealand Cartoon Archive, that had been run in partnership by the New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trust and the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, was fully absorbed into the Alexander Turnbull Library.

The Cartoon Archive grew out of founder Ian F. Grant's frustration while researching his bestselling 1980 book The Unauthorized Version: A Cartoon History of New Zealand. "I was commissioned to write the book by an Australian publisher and," he says, "after I agreed I went looking for the collections of cartoons I'd assumed would be in our research libraries, as they are in other countries." It was a profound shock - a foretaste of thousands of hours of original research - to find nothing.

"It was after the book was updated and a second edition published in 1987 that it dawned on me that if anyone was going to establish a cartoon archive in New Zealand it was going to be a researcher and writer rather than a cartoonist, who is always preoccupied with producing that day's cartoon," Ian Grant recalls. "And I had the wholehearted support of my wife Diane who saw an opportunity to clear boxes of cartoons from under nearly every bed in the house."

There was similar enthusiasm from the then Minister of the Arts and historian Michael Bassett who assisted Ian Grant's travel to the United States and Britain to look at similar archives. Back in New Zealand Grant wrote a report that earned seed funding. He then went searching for a home for the archive; the enthusiasm and support of then chief librarian Jim Traue ensured that it became part, in a singular way, of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Ian F. Grant, Chairman of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trust, Mr Peter Cartwright, H.E. The Hon. Dame Silvia Cartwright, Governor General of New Zealand, and Rachel Macfarlane, Cartoon Archive Trust Administrator, at the hand-over to the Alexander Turnbull Library at the National Library and the launch of Between the Lines on 27 October 2005.

The New Zealand Cartoon Archive was launched by then Prime Minister Jim Bolger on 1 April 1992. For the first thirteen years the Archive was run, in partnership, by the Cartoon Archive Trust and the Turnbull Library which provides a safe, professional, accessible repository for the Archive. The New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trust, with its private sector trustees, raised funds to operate the Archive and support exhibitions, publications, lectures and other activities to ensure the widespread promotion of New Zealand cartoons. It was a non-profit-making charitable organisation that was supported by sponsorship, donations and a membership. The Alexander Turnbull Library manages the collection. Together, the Trust and the Turnbull funded the systematic indexing of a fast-growing collection of cartoon originals and copies gathered from many sources.

"The importance of cartoons is that they capture the unofficial values and attitudes of the day," says Ian Grant, former executive chairman of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trust and now chairman of the Guardians of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive. "Cartoons provide a street level view of the world, not a high-rise bureaucratic perspective, or a corridors of power slant, or even an ivory tower, academic assessment," he says. In addition to the usefulness of cartoons to researchers and publishers, he notes, the Archive is strongly aware of the educational value of cartoons.

The New Zealand Cartoon Archive has become New Zealand's principal cartoon collection and research institution. The collection includes the work of over 60 New Zealand and expatriate New Zealand cartoonists and over 25,000 cartoons. These cartoons have been indexed and are available on the National Library's TAPUHI internet system and over 1000 cartoons and caricatures can actually be viewed on the library's Timeframes website. The cartoons - originals and copies - have been gifted to the Archive by cartoonists and their relatives, collectors, politicians, and organisations, and the Archive has received, by arrangement, copies and some originals of the cartoons that appear in the country's newspaper and periodical press.

After opening the New Zealand Cartoon Archive exhibition "David Low - Kiwi Cartoonist on Hitler's Blacklist" at the National Library Gallery in November 1995, the Duke of Edinburgh inspects a caricature by Sir David Low of particular interest.

The Cartoon Archive has organised successful lecture tours by David Low's biographer, Professor Colin Seymour-Ure, by New Zealand-raised Daily Telegraph cartoonist Nicholas Garland, and by Roger Law, creator of the British satirical puppet series Spitting Image.

In 2001 the Cartoon Archive assisted L J. Hooker to establish in New Zealand a national schools' cartooning competition modelled on the successful competition that the real estate company has been running in Australia for a number of years. This introduced thousands of primary school pupils to the principles of cartooning and the creation of visual ideas.

In June 2001 the Archive also organised and ran a Cartoonists' Convention, with the support of the major newspaper chains. Most of the country's leading cartoonists attended, along with three leading practitioners from Australia.

The Cartoon Archive had mounted thirteen exhibitions and published five books by the end of 2005.

The first touring exhibition, A Bit of Cheek, The many faces of Muldoon, toured New Zealand in 1992-1994. In 1994 it was followed by The Daily Smile, Eric Heath cartoons 1965-1993. David Low, Kiwi Cartoonist on Hitler's Blacklist, which was launched by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh in November 1995, attracted an audience of 14,500 at the National Library and was seen by 120,000 New Zealanders on its national tour. Guts and Glory, an exhibition of rugby cartoons was opened by the Rt Hon. Sir Michael Hardie Boys in June 1999 and toured until July 2002. The Other Side Of The Ditch, an exhibition that explores the historical, political, economic, cultural and sporting relationships between Australia and New Zealand over the century since the Federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, ran at the National Library Gallery from late November 2001 to March 2002 and was later shown in Auckland and in Canberra in 2003. An accompanying book of the same name, The Other Side Of The Ditch was reprinted within three months. In July 2003 Harpies & Heroines, a major exhibition of cartoons on the changing roles of women in New Zealand since they gained the vote in 1893, was opened at the National Library Gallery and a book of the same name, Harpies & Heroines was published. The cartoons were compiled and annotated by Rachel Macfarlane and Cerridwyn Young of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive. The exhibition toured to selected New Zealand centres over the period 2003 to 2005. In October 2003 the book Public Lives, Premiers and Prime Minsters of New Zealand, 1856-2003, written by Ian F. Grant, was launched at Parliament by Rt Hon Jonathon Hunt, and two former prime ministers, Rt Hon Jim Bolger and Rt Hon Geoffrey Palmer.

A small exhibition of Peter Bromhead’s work was shown in the National Library (auditorium foyer) in 1999 and has been followed in this venue by Fun & Games - New Zealand Cartoon Perspectives on the Olympics 1952-2000 from August 2000 to July 2001, then 30 from 2000 from June 2001 to April 2002, then The Line-Up, featuring the work of 36 cartoonists in the collection, from April 2002 to October 2003, and then Public Lives, an exhibition of selected cartoons from the book.

New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trustees in 1997. From left: Mike Drogemuller (trustee), Tom Scott (trustee), Ian Grant (chairperson of trustees), Archive patron Sir Michael Hardie Boys, Lady Hardie Boys, Ian Fraser (trustee), Susan Foster (Cartoon Archive manager/curator), and Mike Robson (trustee).

May-June 2002 saw The Famous Five - Manawatu’s cartoonists on Show, an exhibition in produced in association with Te Manawa, at Te Manawa, Palmerston North. In May 2004 Lodge Laughs at Wellington, an exhibition of cartoons by the late Wellington cartoonist, Nevile Lodge, complied and annotated by staff of the Cartoon Archive, went on show at the Wellington Museum of City and Sea. The book of the same title Lodge Laughs at Wellington published by the Cartoon Archive was launched at the same time.

October 2005 saw the wind-up of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trust and the establishment of the Guardians of the New Zealand Cartoon Archive with Ian F. Grant as the chairperson, and Dr Bob Brockie, Mr Rod Emmerson, Mr Clive Lind and Rachel Macfarlane as members.

On 27 October 2005 at the hand-over ceremony for the New Zealand Cartoon Archive Trust at the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library, Wellington, the Cartoon Archive’s book Between the Lines: A Cartoon Century of New Zealand and Political story, 1906-2005 by Ian F. Grant was launched.