• About
  • Bibliography
  • Memoirs & biographies

University of Otago 1869-2019

~ writing a history

University of Otago 1869-2019

Tag Archives: pranks

The McCahon hoax

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Ali Clarke in student life, students' association

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

1960s, art, chemistry, pranks

The three copies of McCahon's painting on display in the Otago student union. From the front page of the Evening Star, 26 October 1961.

The three copies of McCahon’s painting on display in the Otago student union. From the front page of the Evening Star, 26 October 1961.

Two Otago graduates have just owned up, after more than fifty years, to a prank involving a Colin McCahon painting. McCahon is hailed as perhaps New Zealand’s greatest painter; his works attract premium prices and are held in major international collections. Among the McCahon oils held by the Fletcher Trust Collection, Auckland, is Painting 1958, notable for “its large dark and light forms and the sense of gaps or spaces between”.  This uncompromisingly abstract work is not to everybody’s taste, and when it first came to public attention in 1960 it attracted much derision from  those who did not appreciate “non-representational” painting.

The painting was already notorious when it went on display in the University of Otago student union cafeteria in 1961. In 1960 it was a joint winner of the inaugural Hay’s Art Competition, sponsored by Hay’s Department Store in Christchurch. This was an important event for artists, as New Zealand then had few prizes or scholarships for art, and the existing Kelliher Prize was limited to realist landscapes. As the judges of the Hay’s prize could not reach agreement, they awarded the competition jointly to McCahon and two others. Hay’s, which now owned the painting, offered in 1961 to gift it to Christchurch’s Robert McDougall Art Gallery, but city councillors rejected it, as well as the two other prizewinners, as unfit for exhibition. Since nobody seemed willing to display the painting in Christchurch, the Otago student union was offered as a venue by the OUSA ladies’ vice-president, Jocelyn Wood (now better known as Emeritus Professor Jocelyn Harris of Otago’s Department of English).

The painting prompted a lot of discussion at Otago, not least in the pages of Critic. Ian Devereux and Jimmy Boyne, then masters students in chemistry, devised a scheme which would demonstrate very clearly the opinion of many students on abstract art. Thinking along the lines “any child could paint that,” they made three copies of the painting (retitled “Light on in the flat downstairs” by one wit). This was a top secret operation, carried out at night in one of the chemistry labs. They had to keep returning to the union to check the original, then rush back to their own work. They discovered that oil paints were too expensive for impecunious students, and completed the work using Dulux white house paint and Fletcher’s bitumastic roof sealer, painting over plaster of paris to give the required texture. They thought their scheme was foiled when one of the chemistry lecturers, Arthur Williamson, caught them at their painting one night, but Williamson appreciated the prank, and even offered a donation towards materials.

When Devereux and Boyne, in the dead of night, finally placed their paintings next to the original, they were disappointed at how different they appeared – the sheen of McCahon’s work made it stand out from the others. So they carefully wrapped the original and hid it in a cleaner’s cupboard. They hung their three copies on the union cafeteria wall, together with a notice inviting viewers to pick out which was the original. The cafeteria was abuzz with discussion of the paintings over the next couple of days. Boyne and Devereux could hardly contain their laughter over some of the comments they overheard: one professor commented “I can tell it’s the one on the right because of the power of the brushwork.” A feature story on the prank appeared in the Evening Star newspaper: the pranksters were particularly amused that the reporter assumed they must have been art students, although he or she did manage to detect that the true original had been hidden. The story also made it much further afield, with one of Devereux’s extended family reading about it in Portsmouth, England.

After a couple of anxious nights spent worrying about the safety of McCahon’s original painting, Boyne and Devereux returned it to display. The three copies found homes, although they were not all appreciative. Devereux kept one copy for himself, but it was irreparably damaged in transit during a move to the North Island. They gave one copy to one of their chemistry classmates, Claire Parton, as a wedding gift; she immediately passed it on to her father, Prof Hugh Parton, head of the Department of Chemistry. For many years this copy hung in the departmental library as an exemplar of the ingenuity of chemistry students. The third copy went to Arthur Williamson, who kept it in the garage as his wife refused to have it in the house. Meanwhile, the original passed through the ownership of various well-known businesses, ending up with the Chase Corporation. An employee there rescued it from being used as packaging and it was purchased by the Fletcher Trust at auction in 1987.

McCahon was, unsurprisingly, not impressed with the prank. His lawyer wrote a letter to the OUSA threatening legal action, but as they had no idea who had carried out the prank nothing could be done. Other than the perpetrators and a couple of the chemistry staff, until now nobody has known the identity of the copyists. James Boyne went on to study medicine and has recently retired as a GP in Milton. Ian Devereux worked for the DSIR, completed a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington and then set up a very successful business, Rocklabs, which manufactured crushing and sampling equipment used by mining and geology businesses all over the world. They have been reminiscing recently over their Otago student days and decided to go public about their 1961 exploits. I am most grateful to them for sharing their story!

The best prank?

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by Ali Clarke in student life

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

1950s, Knox, pranks

The flight path of the 1952 flying saucers, as mapped in the Press, 4 March 1978.

The flight path of the 1952 flying saucers, as mapped in the Press, 4 March 1978.

There have been a fair few imaginative Otago student pranks, but the cleverest I’ve heard of so far is undoubtedly the “grand interplanetary hoax” of 1952. According to the handout given to participants, this scheme was “designed to cure the ODT of flying saucerites and inoculate that worthy journal with a healthy degree of septicism” (typos as in the original). The local daily had been irritating the instigators – all residents of Knox College – who bewailed its trivialisation of major world events and preoccupation with UFOs.

They came up with a detailed flight plan for two saucers which would fly over New Zealand at supersonic speeds from north to south on the night of 6 December. There were some pretty good brains behind the hoax. They included future professors of medicine (John Scott and Ian McDonald), a professor of statistics (Ross Leadbetter) and lecturers of education (Russell Cowie and Ken Nichol), among others. The students involved had by that date finished their last exams and scattered home all over New Zealand. They wrote or phoned their local newspapers to report sightings, detailing times, shapes, colours and sounds, and inventing wives, children and friends to corroborate their evidence. Their assumed names and addresses were never fully checked by reporters.

Reports appeared in local newspapers all over New Zealand and the Press Association wired them around the country. The ODT – which took the reports most seriously – sought some expert analysis from astronomers who commented that if the sightings were “not the result of collaboration (and they appear to be genuine, independent observations), then they constitute a surprising weight of evidence in favour of the supposition that some object did pass down the South Island at about 11 o’clock that night.”

The hoaxers were rather startled by the success of their stunt, which they kept quiet for many years. Eventually, though, some were uneasy that their reports were still being taken seriously by some people. By a remarkable coincidence, on the night of 6 December 1952 a United States Air Force bomber flying over the Gulf of Mexico saw some unidentified flying objects, and this seemed to corroborate the New Zealand reports.

In 1978 writer and researcher Brian Mackrell, who had kept clippings of the reports as a child, wrote an article about them for the Christchurch Press. Entitled “The night of the hissing discs”, this linked the New Zealand reports with the Gulf of Mexico sightings and even included a map of the supposed flight path. Mackrell wondered whether this might have been “an elaborately contrived hoax,” but the sober and detailed descriptions extracted from the published reports of supposed witnesses from all over New Zealand must have convinced many of his readers that alien forces had indeed flown over the country. Soon the Press published a follow-up article in which Ken Nichol, a lecturer at Christchurch Teachers’ College, revealed the hoax. The story also appeared in a 1994 article by Sir John Scott for the New Zealand Skeptics journal and in a 2002 television documentary. Some Press readers refused to believe Nichol’s claim that this was a hoax, and no doubt there are still believers out there.

Do you know of any great Otago student pranks? If so, I’d love to hear about them!

Students kidding around

29 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by Ali Clarke in buildings, health sciences, residential colleges, student life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

1930s, 1960s, dentistry, Knox, pranks

An uninvited guest at the official opening of the Dental School, 4 March 1961. Minister of Education Blair Tennent is speaking, with University Chancellor Hubert Ryburn seated at left. Photograph courtesy of Peter Innes.

An uninvited guest at the official opening of the Dental School, 4 March 1961. Minister of Education Blair Tennent is speaking, with University Chancellor Hubert Ryburn seated at left. Photograph courtesy of Peter Innes (originally published in the ODT, 6 March 1961).

When Blair Tennent, Minister of Education, visited Dunedin to open the new Dental School building in 1961, he probably wasn’t especially surprised to receive a lively welcome from local students. Tennent was once an Otago student himself – he graduated in dentistry in 1922 – and a recent ten years on the council of Massey Agricultural College had no doubt kept him aware of student hi-jinks.

A group of about 150 students dressed as Arabs prostrated themselves on the ground before the ministerial car as it attempted to drive through the Octagon. They then carried a laughing Tennent shoulder high on a litter to the Dental School. The procession was led by a goat, which normally resided in a student flat. As the New Zealand Dental Journal wrote, its “well timed bleats later punctuated the formal addresses in a highly amusing manner.”

High spirits could perhaps be forgiven, for it was a great relief to dental staff and students to have new accommodation. The Dental School opened in 1907 in what is now the Staff Club, but moved to what is now the Marples Building (Zoology) in 1926. By the 1940s this was becoming cramped and John Walsh, Dean of Dentistry, began campaigning for a new building. After numerous delays due to competing demands for government funding, shortages of labour and materials, and changes of government, construction finally got underway in 1956. Problems with the foundations led to further delays, prompting use of a prefab school building to relieve congestion temporarily.

The building – renamed the Walsh Building in 2001 in honour of the former dean – has since undergone various renovations and extensions. It was designed in the Government Architect’s office by Ian Reynolds, supervised by Gordon Wilson, and is now recognised as an outstanding example of modernist architecture. The New Zealand Historic Places Trust registered it as a Category 1 historic building in 2005.

Tennent was not the first VIP visitor to the university to be greeted by livestock. In a famous 1934 incident at Knox College, Lord Bledisloe, then Governor General, encountered a pen of pigs just outside the grand front entrance. Bledisloe, known to be a pig fancier, took this in good part, inspecting the pigs and noting they were very good ones. Later, as the master led Lord and Lady Bledisloe downstairs from the college tower, the official party encountered another ‘Lord and Lady Bledisloe’ – two students dressed up for the occasion – coming up the stairs. A resident recalled that “the two Bledisloe pairs bowed at one another and passed on … I heard that old Bledisloe could hardly hold his laughter.”

Do you know of any other pranks involving distinguished visitors to Otago?

Recent posts

  • The book is out!
  • From surgeon to student: a residential history of 86 Queen Street
  • Keeping it fresh for 121 years: Scents of the Student Christian Movement Otago
  • Where it all began
  • The Park Street residences

Categories

  • buildings
  • commerce
  • health sciences
  • humanities
  • mystery photographs
  • residential colleges
  • sciences
  • student life
  • students' association
  • Uncategorized
  • university administration

1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s anthropology Aquinas Arana benefactors biochemistry books botany chemistry Christchurch classics clothing clubs computer science consumer and applied sciences dentistry economics English film flatting food food science French geography geology graduation history home science human nutrition international students Knox languages law library Maori mathematics medicine mental science microbiology mining music orientation philosophy physical education physics physiology politics psychology public health recreation sports St Margaret's Studholme teaching technology theology university extension war Wellington women writers

Blogroll

  • 50 years of pharmacy education
  • Built in Dunedin
  • Dunedin flat names
  • Hocken blog
  • Hocken Snapshop
  • NZ history
  • Otago Geology Archive
  • Otago University research heritage collections
  • Research on the history of universities
  • Signposts
  • Spark Dunedin
  • UBS review of books
  • University of Otago
  • University of Otago Alumni

Archives

  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • December 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • University of Otago 1869-2019
    • Join 167 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • University of Otago 1869-2019
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...