Study planned on gallery access

Press, 31 January 1984, Page 9

Study planned on gallery access

Ways of providing temporary access for the disabled to the Robert McDougall Art Gallery will be considered by the Christchurch City Council. The gallery, which was opened in 1932, has an entrance approached by a flight of steps. More steps lead to exhibition galleries inside.

Some councillors told the cultural and public relations committee yesterday that the best answer to the problem, since any solution in the present building could damage its architectural integrity, would be a new art gallery. Such a gallery, on a central city site outside the Gardens, has been a talking point for some years, but no firm moves to acquire a site have been made.

Miss Joan Derbidge, secretary of the Canterbury Paraplegic and Physically Disabled Association, said in a letter to the council that proper gallery access for the physically handicapped and elderly should be considered again. “It is ironic that the gallery is making so much effort to be more and more attractive to the community,” she said, “and is succeeding in making more and more people feel deprived. This is compounded by the complete barrier of stairs at the C.S.A. Gallery.” Disabled persons who cannot manage the entrance steps are carried into the

gallery when they arrive.

The gallery director, Mr John Coley, said an experiment with a machine for lifting the disabled up the stairs had not been successful. The machine had been slow and rickety. A ramp with the proper gradient sloping down from the entrance, which is 1.2 m above ground level, “would look like a tongue lolling out of the gallery,” he said.

It was possible that a long, curving ramp could be built along one side of the gallery’s front wall, but such a ramp could block any sunlight to work areas under the gallery. Inside the gallery, exhibition spaces are reached by three steps from the centre court.

Mr Coley said that the doors to those rooms could be another problem. They could not be left open, since they helped control the temperature. Opening up new doorways, and closing old ones to preserve the present amount of exhibition space, could be an expensive way to connect exhibition rooms so that a continuous journey could be made through them by persons in wheelchairs.

Construction of a ramp leading to the gallery’s night entrance, at the end of a long alleyway also used by the Canterbury Museum, was not a good solution. “They (the disabled) want

access through the front of the gallery,” Mr Coley said, “and that’s where they deserve it. That’s where it ought to be.”

Cr H. A. Clark said that the council should be considering the choice of a new gallery site, where a building could be designed to cater for access needs of all persons. Mr Coley said that the council had a “strong duty” to preserve the present building’s integrity as it was designed. It would be expensive to match access ramps and causqways for the disabled with the gallery’s building materials. “Are we putting the aesthetic value before the disabled people?” asked Cr Anne Evans.

Cr Noala Massey said that a makeshift approach would not suit the disabled in the long run.

“They might feel they are half-hearted concessions,” she said.

Mr Coley said that the gallery also had the problem of being inaccessible to motor vehicles, although some busloads of disabled persons had arrived at the entrance, through the Botanic Gardens, by special arrangement.

Cr Geoff Stone said that temporary ramps, placed whenever they were needed, “would be preferable to doing nothing at all.” A report on possible temporary access arrangement, with estimated costs, will be prepared for the council.