Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1936. A TEMPLE OF THE MUSES

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1936. A TEMPLE OF THE MUSES

In the eyes of the vast majority of mankind the dignity of an individual or an institution will always tend lo be assessed, in the first place, on outside appearances; so that when the people of Wellington and the visitors to the city look on the noble building which now houses the Dominion Museum and National Art Gallery, opened this afternoon, they may well be more favourably predisposed towards seeing for themselves what treasures there are inside than when science and art alike were humbly lodged in modest premises away from the public view. Thus the term "museum," for a long time in disrepute from its association, on the one hand, as in the American "dime museum," with a collection of freaks, and, on the other, as a sort of "old curiosity shop," will come to its. own again in its original meaning of a "Temple of the Muses." This was the name given by Alexander the Great to the institution which he founded in Alexandria some three centuries before the Christian era. Really it was not a museum quite in our sense, but rather a university^ composed of a series of associated colleges, devoted to the cultivation of the Muses, the deities who presided over, the sciences and arts of ancient times. It is interesting to observe that the modern museum and art gallery are moving back, in a perfectly natural trend, towards this Greek conception of-a centra of culture, and when the museum is associated with a library, as it was in Alexandria and as it is in the British Museum, this process, which has the support of many modern thinkers, like Mr. H. ,G. Wells, appears more natural still. Alexander the Great himself was a liberal patron of the arts and sciences and sent his old teacher, the phi'lo-* sopher Aristotle, collections from the lands he conquered. It may have been the fact that there Svas no counterpart of the Alexandrian "Museum" in classical antiquity that led, when the museum was burnt down, to a disuse of the term, which was not revived until the Renaissance. From that time there were in Western Europe many private collectors of statuary, gems, coins, medals, manuscripts, and other relics of the past, while others took up the gathering of specimens of plant life, minerals, and curious animals. The first person, however, to present, or, it may be, to restore, the idea of, a museum as an institution which should gather together the things which men would wish to see and study was Sir Francis Bacon, in his "New Atlantis" (1627). Here we get an outline of a great national museum of science and art, a centre of practical inquiry and experimentation. Meanwhile, the collectors were very busy picking up here and there, as the world opened up again to travellers, some very strange curios, reminiscent of the journeys of Marco Polo and Mandeville. Thus in London in the time of Cromwell there were the two Tradescants who ran a "museum," of which we have a description under the title: "Musaeum Tradescantianum . . .' a collection of rarities preserved at South Lambeth." Among the entries in the catalogue are: "Two Feathers from the Phoenix Tayle," "Claw of the Bird Rock, who, as authors report, is able to trusse an Elephante," and "the Dodot from the . Island of Mauritius." There is something'in this that suggests the patter of the modern side-showman displaying his freaks. A contemporary of the Tradescants was the Earl of Arundel, who acquired the famous Greek sculptures known as the Arundel Marbles, the remnants of which, as of the Tradescants' dodo, survive at Oxford in the Ashmolean Museum, built in 1679 by the university to house the collection of Elias Ashmole to whom the Tradescants had bequeathed their own curious relics. The British Museum similarly originated in private collections, notably those of Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Robert Cotton, and Robert Harley. As Cotton and Harley were primarily bibliophiles, the British Museum, when it was officially founded by Act of Parliament in 1753, included books in its scope and thus became eventually not only the greatest museum, but also the greatest library in the world.

It is fortunate that the magnificent edifice on Mount Cook, by including in its embrace the National Art Gallery as well as the Dominion Museum—a rare combination—can justify a claim that seems almost unique in modern times to be a true Museum, a Temple of the Muses, such as Alexander designed in the city' that still bears his name. As such its influence is doubly enhanced, presenting, as it does, within four walls the best that the Dominion can show in the development of the arts and crafts which distinguish mankind from other denizens of the earth, and also representative specimens that illustrate the nature of our world. Yet the origin of art galleries seems to have been just as casual as that of museums. In Britain it is traced to the activities of certain gentlemen who in the eighteenth century had made the artistic pilgrimage to Rome and took to themselves accordingly the title of "Dilettanti," describing themselves as "desirous of encouraging at home a. taste for those objects which 1 had contributed so much to their entertainment abroad." So they formed in 1734 the Society of Dilettanti, of which Horace Walpole somewhat

spitefully said that "the nominal qualification for membership was having been in Rome, but the real one being drunk." In 1759 the Duke of Richmond threw open his collection of casts "from the best antiques . . . for the use of those who study Painting, Sculpture and Engraving." Unfortunalely the gallery had to be closed because "some young men .. . mutilated

. . . the statues by wantonly breaking off fingers, thumbs, and toes." The Society of Arts of the Dilettanti led in 1765, after a series of I successful exhibitions, to the incorporation, under Royal Charter, of the Society of Artists of Great Britain. The Royal Academy came in 1768 S through the personal efforts of one man, the architect William Chambers, and Sir Joshua Reynolds received his knighthood .as president. His friend, Dr. Samuel Johnson, always a philistine, remained a sceptic of the whole movement. "Surely," he said, "life, if it be long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifles to rid us of our time." It was due, perhaps, to the passive resistance of this pessimistic pragmatism that the National Gallery was not founded until 1324.

In the last "two generations museums and art galleries have ctfme to have a different meaning for the people. They are recognised universally now as' a most valuable means of visual education in aesthetics—the appreciation of what is beauty—and humanism— the life of man in relation to his environment. It is obvious that in any form of education there must be a teacher to explain^ illustrate, and create a sense of order. It is the realisation of this aspect that has given the position of curator in the museum such vital importance. In an article in a recent issue of "The Nineteenth Century" Mr. K. de B. Codrington quotes Sir William Flower as saying:

What a museum really depends on for its success and usefulness is not its specimens, but its curator. .. •.

The curator and his staff are the life and soul of the institution upon which its value depends.

This was emphasised by Lord Bledisloe, when laying, on April 14, 1934, the foundation-stone of the building opened by Lord Galway today. "Upon the right choice of the curator," said Lord Bledisloe, "'the1 efficiency of all museums primarily rests." New Zealand has this' competent administration, but its educative work has been restricted and hampered by the inadequate housing of the splendid collection of priceless relics of days gone by and -the gallery of worthy works of art. For the first time these collections are now decently housed, and New Zealand's National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum are beginning a new life which promises to be one of increasing usefulness, in the education of the community to a consciousness, of its past and a faith in its future. '