Lights a Wigram museum feature

Press, 19 December 1986, Page 4

Lights a Wigram museum feature

Complex, computercontrolled lighting will be an outstanding feature of the Royal New Zealand Air Force museum due to open at Wigram airbase in April. The lighting will play a big part in making the museum a world-class facility, according to the Wigram base commander, Group Captain Ross Donaldson. The building itself is not yet finished, but a small team headed by Leading Aircraftsman David Nicholson is now planning the lighting. Leading Aircraftsman Nicholson has had considerable civilian experience in stage lighting, much of it overseas, and has lit museums in the United States. On this project, he is working with two civilians, Messrs Joe Hayes and Gordon Fawcett. Their biggest challenge is the main hangar, • which will contain 12 aeroplanes arranged in order of age round the building, from World War I to the 19705. At the same time, the exhibits will take the viewer from dawn to dusk, with careful lighting. Thus, the earliest plane will be shown being wheeled out, still with “dew” on the wings, in the “dawn light.” Halfway round the hall will be World War 11, with a fighter being rearmed under the “midday sun.” Leading Aircraftsman Nicholson said that each aircraft would be treated as a separate stage. They would have props such as oil drums and ground staff displayed round them. The hall would need about 200 lights, on about 100 dimmers, all controlled by a specially imported British lighting computer of the sort used for big stage shows.

It would “animate the lighting and give it movement,” he said.

For example, a Spitfire would be shown as it might have appeared at

a forward airbase in Germany late in the war being rearmed under camouflage netting. The “dappled” lighting would be flickering gently to suggest the netting moving in the breeze, said Leading Aircraftsman Nicholson. There would also be a cyclorama at one end of the hangar, acting as a backdrop for several exhibits, and with lighting playing on it. Leading Aircraftsman

Nicholson believed the cyclorama, 67 metres long, would be the biggest in New Zealand. Two aircraft will be displayed in front of the cyclorama in an Antarctic setting — an Auster suspended from the ceiling and lit to simulate flight, and a Beaver on the ground. The Beaver is a gift, the Air Force having lost its own example down a crevasse. New Zealand kept none

of its Canberra bombers when they were replaced by Skyhawks, but the museum will have one, given by the Royal Australian Air Force, and left in its Australian markings. “We could not be crass enough to pretend it is one of ours,” said Group Captain Donaldson. It will be portrayed at “dusk,” as a visitor just arrived from its flight across the Tasman.

Group Captain Donald-

son said that it would be the first use of theatrical lighting, that he knew of, in a museum setting. The museum could not match institutions such as the Smithsonian in size, but would be second to none in presentation, he said.

Leading Aircraftsman Nicholson was not keen to take too much of the credit for that

“People are not going into a museum to look at lights,” he said.