Art gallery plan deplored

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33230, 21 May 1973, Page 1

Art gallery plan deplored

(By G. T. MOFFITT; art criic of "The Press") How quickly the apparently far-reaching ideas for a new art gallery for Christchurch seem to have dissolved into a single-point proposal of expediency.

Certainly the plan to extend the Robert McDougall Art Gallery discussed in “The Press” on Saturday would overcome some of the shortcomings so thoroughly obvious in respect of existing facilities.

Three points which should be considered before any decisions are made are: (1) Parking and access: access and parking facilities for the McDougall Art Gallery are at present hopeless, and unless some worth-while proposals to solve these problems are part of any plan to expand the present site, then such proposals are grossly incomplete. (2) Future needs to expand the gallery facilities: the proposals as outlined seem to be designed to bring the gallery facilities in line with w r hat are really only present requirements. What happens in another 15 or 20 years should the need

for further expansion arise? (3) The uniqueness of the McDougall Art Gallery as a structure: the gallery represents architecturally, in its location, and in its collection of ' work, the thinking and attitudes towards art of a particular period of development in New Zealand society, and as such could well be preserved in its entirety, as a period piece.

To try to tie, architecturally, an extension of 14,000 sq. ft to an existing structure of 9000 sq. ft seems to be a complete anachronism—particularly when that structure is aesthetically representative of another age. It also appears to place a completely unnecessary and meaningless restriction on the architect selected, when in fact he could be given a fresh site and the opportunity to clan for today’s needs and tomorrow’s.