OTAGO MUSEUM

Evening Star, Issue 25617, 18 October 1945, Page 10

OTAGO MUSEUM

FINANCIAL APPEAL PROPOSED " The Otago Museum has reached a decisive point in its history. All its exhibition' galleries are overcrowded, and a number of sections are not exhibited at all," states the annual report. The Museum Committee intends to launch an appeal to the province of Otago to provide an income on a scale comparable'with that already provided in other main cities,' adds the report, and to obtain the-finance necessary to erect an auditorium and additional exhibition galleries. Funds available for this latter purpose amounted to £20,000 last June. Accessions 'during the year were as follows:—Anthropology 894, archaeology 1,495, technology 378, zoology 94, and general zoology ,9. Among the donations were the late Colonel George Barclay's collection of nyijitary medals, numbering 320 pieces, which were presented by Mrs Barclay; 100 pieces from Samoa, presented by Sub-lieutenant D. R. Freeman; 250 pieces from the Wakatipu district, presented by Mr Charles Haines; 180 pieces from the lllev. C. H. Crockett; and 100 pieces from New Zealand, Polynesia, and Melanesia, presented by Mrs W. Newlands. Colonel F. Waite had presented between 1,300 and 1,400 items of Egyptian material, as well as examples of Greek. Roman, Arab, and Syrian craftsmanship. , Reviewing the position of the anthropological department, the director recalls in the report that for the first 50 years of the Museum's existence it was devoted to natural history. With the appointment of a keeper in 1919, the rate of growth of items donated had risen steeply. An archaeology register had been opened in 1923, and the annual number of registrations had passed the thousand mark on several occasions. The coin catalogue, inaugurated in 1944 by Mr Willi Fels, had passed the 6,000 mark. In the first 50 years of tho Museum's history (1868-1918) the anthropological accessions numbered 1,500, hut in the next 25 years they had numbered 50,000. ANTHROPOLOGICAL ACCESSIONS. The great increase in registration of anthropological material since 1919 was due to two factors, states the report. With the appointment of a keeper the donors felt assured that the material presented would receive adequate attention, while the establishment of the Fels and Colquhoun funds and of the Association of Friends of the Museum made available money for the purchase of picked specimens to strengthen the exhibition series. From the beginning a clearly-defined purchasing policy had been followed. The first aim was the creation of a distinguished Maori collection, linked with the closely-related Polynesian material cutture. Next in order came Melanesia, Micronesia, and Indonesia, then Greece, Crete, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Eastern Asia. The expenditure of that part of the Colquhoun fund employed for the purchase of biological material had followed a "parallel policy. The erection of the Fels Wing had made possible the display of a large part of the ethnographic collections and "the employment of better methods of display. A feature of,the exhibition galleries was the dioramas, which were still unique in New Zealand. The salary of the education officer was now paid by the Education Board. More than 20,000 visits to the Museum annually are paid by city school children in classes, while circulating collections were being sent in growing numbers to country schools. " This," states the report. "is probably the most important development that has occurred in the whole history of the Otago Museum."