Michael Bancroft died on 7 July 2026, aged 76. A former Catholic priest and professed member of the Marist Brothers’ Order, a retired St John chaplain, and a celebrant, Michael stood beside people at some of life’s most profound moments: as they were dying and grieving, and as they married or affirmed their love for one another. He cared for the living and guarded the memory of those who had died. Collections Data Manager Gareth Watkins pays tribute to Michael here.
Michael was equally at home leading an AIDS Candlelight Memorial service or quietly tending the grave of AIDS activist Darren Horn. For 27 years, Michael renewed the simple wooden cross marking Darren’s grave, until a permanent memorial was dedicated in 2020. In public ceremony and private remembrance, his care was steady, practical and deeply personal.
These qualities could also be seen when he became guardian of the New Zealand AIDS Memorial Quilt in 2003, and in the way he gently shepherded it into Te Papa’s care in 2012, securing a permanent home within the national collection.
Three blocks from the New Zealand AIDS Memorial Quilt:
Inspired by the international NAMES Project founded in San Francisco, the New Zealand quilt began in Wellington in 1988, when the first panel was made in memory of Peter Cuthbert. Its 16 large blocks hold around 140 names. Most contain eight panels, each about the size of a standard grave and created by partners, whānau and friends using a mixture of textiles, photographs, objects and paint.
One of the early quilt organisers was Darren Horn, who wrote: “All the quilts speak of love, compassion and memories. Each is composed of recollection, sadness, acceptance and letting go. The quilts help us to learn and accept”.
Michael understood this because he knew many of the people behind the names. From the late 1980s, he supported people with HIV and AIDS and those closest to them, conducting more than 100 AIDS-related funerals. Standing before the quilt, he could move from panel to panel, sharing story after story. Yet his focus remained on the people named and unnamed within it, and on those who loved and remembered them.
The decision to entrust the quilt to Te Papa was not taken lightly. For years it had travelled to schools, marae, and community halls, often unfolded on floors and grass. Entering a museum collection meant it could no longer travel as freely, but specialist care would protect it for future generations. Michael navigated that change alongside the communities connected to the quilt and Te Papa’s curatorial, collection management and conservation teams.
On its arrival at Te Papa, the conservation team worked with everything from textiles and glitter paint to foam, plastic dolls and photographs. They documented fragile details, gently cleaned surfaces and made protective covers. The work is technical, but deeply human. Textile conservator Rachael Collinge recalled that the first few times she worked with the quilt, she “just couldn’t stop crying”, adding: “There’s just a lot of love and heartache, and you really feel it”.
Visitors have felt that same connection. During a 2023 display of four quilt blocks at the museum, curator Stephanie Gibson said people were “almost stunned into silence” when faced with “the materialisation of grief”. The love poured into the panels, she reflected, allows a person’s life to “live on like a whisper to people they’ve never met, many years later”.
That ability to carry a life forward was evident in a quilt panel made in the 1990s by artist and filmmaker Welby Ings for his partner, Ian Williams. Much of its painted surface had cracked, but Ian’s face, painted directly onto calico without an undercoat, remained “perfectly pure, perfectly preserved”. Welby reflected: “It’s beautiful in your heart to see somebody who you love. And they’re still the same way you painted them”.
Elsewhere on the panel, the words of W. B. Yeats’s Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven had cracked and faded, leaving only faint traces visible, though Welby knew the poem remained beneath the surface. He described it as one of the few poems that could break his heart: a few modest lines about cloth, love and what we are willing to give in the name of love.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
– W.B. Yeats, Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Michael understood that caring for the quilt meant caring for the relationships, words and lives held within the panels. At the 2023 gathering, he thanked those who had “put their memories together” so that, 35 years later, people could still gather and remember. He ended with a simple request: “Keep the memories alive in your hearts and your living”.
Haere rā, Michael. We will keep you close in our hearts and in our living.
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