MUSEUM WORK

Evening Star, Issue 22890, 23 February 1938, Page 17

MUSEUM WORK

DR OLIVER'S VISIT ABROAD (Per United Press Association) WELLINGTON. Feb 22. To visit the world's principal museums under the auspices ox the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Dr W. R. B. Oliver, director of the Dominion Museum in Wellington, will leave Wellington at the end of next week. He will sail from Auckland by the Mariposa on March 7 for San Francisco. Dr Oliver expects to be absent for about eight months and will travel extensively in America and in Europe, In an interview to-day he stated that he hoped to visit the great museums at Chicago and New York, which were the largest of their kind in the world, and also the very fine European museums of Norway, Sweden and Germany. Dr Oliver said there were many new features of museum work which he would be able to study. The last 20 years had brought a revolution in museum administration. Not only were the scope of such institutions and their value to the community far wider to-day than formerly, but many modern museums specialised tremendously. There were whole huge establishments, such as the Munich Museum of Technology, devoted to a single subject. Whole museums were given over to the study of anthropology. For example, a wonderful one of this type had recently been opened in London. “But I shall be able to give a better account of modem museum methods when I come back again,” Dr Oliver added. Also travelling by the Mariposa to the United States will be Mr E. O. G. Scott, of the Launceston Museum, Tasmania. He, too, is the recipient of a Carnegie Corporation grant. While Dr Oliver is absent the work of the Dominion Museum will be superintended by Mr W.- J. Phillips.