MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 127, 25 November 1914, Page 6

MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY

One advantage of the Legislative Council undeT its present constitution is that it can stand quiet and unmoved amid the swirl of a General Election. While the late members of " another place" are wildly struggling for their lives in the surging waters, honourable members of the Legislative Council are able, like the Epicurean philosopher, to Tegard their sufferings in tranquil contemplation from the shore and to attend undisturbed to the ordinary business ol life. Thus it is that while all his colleagues are battling for existence, and far too etronuoufly occupied to have aoy

time or attention to spare, except in spasmodic snatches, for the normal work of their Departments, the Minister for Internal Affairs is able from his position of vantage above the fray to think and speak with his usual deliberation and lucidity of a matter which is of great public importance, though it may not affect a single vote in the struggle now proceeding. The condition of the Dominion Museum has long been a disgrace to the country. Crowded together in an old,, musty, worm-eaten, and highly-inflammable building — so crowded that classification and exhibition in a large number of cases is a sheer impossibility—is a collection of scientific specimens of immense value. Not a few of these are absolutely irreplaceable because unique; many others are practically so, since the expense which hag denied them a proper housing would be equally fatal to the hope of finding substitutes. How much longer is this country to remain guilty of the meanness and the folly involved in the treatment of its scientific treasures in this monstrous fashion? A remedy would have been found before now if the present Minister for Internal Affaire had had a free hand, but there have hitherto been too many competing claims, and just when success seemed imminent the war came along and shut down the money market. But for this, saysi Mr. Bell, the matter would have been laid before Parliament last session, i The scheme that he has now in viey is a f much wider one than the mere rehousing of the specimens which now lie in a more or less chaotic state in .the old ■ .building in Museum-street, and he does not even give the Museum the first place in his scheme. Its scientific treasures are not the only things that this country is neglecting in a very perilous fashion. Its historical documents and records have as yet no safe and central abiding place, but are scattered about in various custodies and in various degrees of insecurity. Tbs country should be grateful that Mr. Bell's historical conscience and literary sense have impelled him to remove this reproach. Among the documents thus promiscuously stowed and insecurely guarded the Minister mentioned the early deeds from the Maoris, the records of the New Zealand Company, and perhaps, as he suggested, the most important of all, the records of the Native Land Committee and its proceedings. Documents of this kind should as documents of title be guarded with the same strictness as the records of the Land Registry Offices or the Supreme Court ; but there ai'e other classes of records whose value is now purely historical but is nevertheless incalculable. It is a pleasure to find a New Zealand Minister fired with the ambition of having documents of this kind "collated, indexed, stored, and made available for reference in the same manner $is the Rolls are kept in England." For this purpose there is already . in existence a building almost ideally suited. The Mount Cook site is described by Mr. Bell as "the finest in Wellington, and one of the finest in New Zealand" — a plain statement of fact from which few reasonable people will be disposed to dissent, The excellence of the site can hardjy have escaped the notice of the southern Minister who decided to desecrate it with a, gaol. It seems more reasonable to suppose him placing a gaol on our choicest site in a fit of Swiftian or Erewhonian humour towards the people of Wellington— To show by one satiric touch That no one wanted it so much. Long before the building was completed tho absurdity of carrying out this fell purpose was obvious to everybody, and it is good to hear from the Minister that, though quite impossible for a Museum, it will admirably serve the purposes of the Record Office that he desires to establish. Even the cells and corridors will suit his object exactly. It is, he says, "an almost ideal building, of great strength, immune from dajsger by fire, opening on to a hall on each story, so that the documents can be indexed and made available for reference on tables arranged in the lialls." The Dominion Museum and the Art Gallery will find their proper places in buildings to be erected on tne same site, and there will still be a large area left of the sixteen acres occupied by the reserve. This balance is to be converted into a public park and a playground for the children of the Mount Cook School. The whole scheme is an admirable one. At present the surroundings are far from attractive, but they are bound to improve as rising values banish brickmaking and the like to less central positions. Here is indeed an admirable opportunity for the Government and the Corporation to co-operate in a model venture in town-planning. May they both have the necessary funds available very soon !