MUSEUM TOUR

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28217, 4 March 1957, Page 7

MUSEUM TOUR

New Wing Shown To Friends About 150 members of the Association of Friends of the Canterbury Museum made a tour of the partly-completed new wing and reconstructed original building on Saturday afternoon. Dr. Roger Duff, the director of the museum, members of the association’s executive committee, and the museum staff led small grotips of visitors about the building. From the new foyer they went first to the European fine arts hall, the one complete gallery, and into the impressive Edgar Stead hall of native birds, formerly the gallery of the mammal room.

Display work in the Edgar Stead hall is now far enough advanced to indicate future developments. There are no windows in the hall and the birds are to be shown in facsimiles of their natural surroundings in New Zealand. the Chatham Islands, and the islands of the sub-Antarctic. The recessed bays in which the birds are to be shown will be lit by fluorescent lighting. Through fireproof doors the groups went into the hall of New Zealand fish and reptiles in the new wing. The planetarium proposed for the museum by the Royal Society of New Zealand will be housed in one corner of that hall. Plaster-Relief Globe A new feature of the geology thall will be the large plasterrelief globe suspended from the ceiling. Revolving on a spindle the globe will be spot-lighted to show day and night and the seasons in various parts of the world. The Antarctic will be viewed from a deeply recessed basin in the floor and the Arctic from a gallery.

Off the hall of New Zealand botany are two smaller halls—one for the display of land invertebrates and the other for marine invertebrates. Storerooms and a large fireproof strongroom for the protection of rare and irreplacable items in the museum’s collection adjoin these halls. The last room to be shown to the visitors was the 99ft x 40ft hall of Polynesian culture, illuminated by -corrugated perspex skylights. From the Polynesian hall, a landing leads to the mezzanine! floor with its offices, workshops and library. On the floor there is also a lecture hall with seating for 300 persons to be used for public lectures and scientific, artistic and historical societies and museum school classes. An innovation is a public reading room, also on the mezzanine floor. The new wing increases the floor area of the museum by about 40.000 square feet, and houses six of the eight galleries.