MUSEUM AND FREE LIBRARY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9024, 1 November 1892, Page 3

MUSEUM AND FREE LIBRARY.

■ TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—With regard to the suggestion which has been made in. your columns, and to which Mr. Peacock alluded in his speech at the opening of tho Institute annexe, to endeavour to get an exchange effected between the Museum authorities and the Free Library, I would like to add one word about the matter of the statues from the antique which are in . the Museum. Their present home is a most unfortunate one, and quite unsuited to their proper display. The galleries under which they have to be placed, and the cross lights which occur in the Museum, render them almost uselesja to the art < student, while it is almost impossible to get at a suitable distance from any one of them without the show cases intervening. The Auckland Art Gallery, when the McKelvie Gallery has been arranged, would, I believe, afford ample space for suitably displaying these statues, which would in no way interfere with the use of the building as a picture gallery. The lighting of the statues would be quite satisfactory, and they would be available for all art students at least as often as they are in the museum. As to the possibilities of an exchange such as has been suggested, I knownothing, but 1 think all interested would be in favour of it; while, as to the particular works to which 1 have referred, I am sure that all will aj:ree as to the incongruity of a copy of Ancieat Greek Art being wedged in between a stuffed owl and a Colorado beet'ie. I am, etc., E. W. Payton.