Items in a variety of media from early maps, navigational instruments, etchings and pamphlets to oil paintings, manuscripts and important first editions were collected for the light that they could shed on European activity in the region. In going beyond the portraits of the elite and artworks judged at the time to be aesthetically important, to materials collected for their possible documentary importance, Nan Kivell both anticipated and provided the material for a re-evaluation of the history of the Australian, New Zealand, and Pacific region.