Museum’s new wing may begin next year

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32613, 22 May 1971, Page 15

Museum’s new wing may begin next year

Construction of a new wing to commemorate the centenary of the Canterbury Museum should begin next year. The museum trust board this week decided to instruct an architect to prepare plans for the first stage of the wing, which might cost $500,000.

The board considered it had sufficient confidence in gaining support from the public to proceed with the centennial wing by engaging an architect to prepare working drawings and specifications with a view to starting the wing before the end of 1972, said the chairman (Mr H. H. Deans). “An appeal to the community will be pressed vigorously next year, beginning with the announcement of plans at a local bodies’ ‘at home’ in March and ending with a house-to-house appeal in October,” said Mr Deans. During this year, the board will continue to concentrate on its appeal to foundations and governments for contributions to the Antarctic Centre, to be set in the centennial wing. Implementation of the centennial wing proposal was something which must be faced, said Mr K. J. Jensen. The board should show it had faith and "get cracking.” ESTIMATE OF COSTS “We see costs increasing all the time. If we sit here, in a few years we will still have the building fund, but it will have depreciated and

we won’t have the building,” he said. The finance committee had been thinking of proceeding with the first stage, said the museum’s director (Dr R. S. Duff). This would be of basement and two floors, with a floor area of 24,000 sq. ft. In May, 1970, this had been estimated to cost $400,000, said Dr Duff. With professional fees and an allowance for inflation since then, the final cost could be about $500,000. Stage II of the wing would be four storeys, but it would be difficult to say what this building would cost. “But I am confident that we can get stage I,” Dr Duff said. “We have been too timid with the public for too long.” Estimates adopted by the boar! provide for $lO,OOO to the building fund during the present financial year. By March 31, 1972, there will be $130,000 in this fund, together with public donations. PICTORIAL GALLERY Dr Duff announced a proposal to establish a pictorial history gallery as a major display section of the new wing. This section would be to maintain the museum’s long-standing policy of specialising in painting with topographical or historical interThe pictorial history gallery would be in the first floor visitors’ lounge of the new wing, and was expected to be a popular feature. It would be permanent, and show early Canterbury as the Alexander Turnbull library did Wellington, i Plans for the lounge include lift access, for handicapped persons, landscape window views of the Botanic Gardens, limited cafeteria facilities, and the resited planetarium. The proposals were well received at a luncheon address to a service club, said Dr Duff. Similar organisations might wish to contribute to the $20,000 lift for the new wing. Dr Duff suggested that the public might wish to help the new section by making 1 gifts and bequests.