A WRETCHED BUILDING

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15033, 2 September 1922, Page 6

A WRETCHED BUILDING

TO STORE ART TREASURES. The singular thing about the complaint made by Mr E. W. Hunt, chairman, at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, at Wellington, as. to the inadequacy of the building, was that all present seemed to take it for granted that it was so. Evidently ‘ the had got so used to their squalid surroundings that they had forsaken ambition, and taken refuge in stolid indifference. However, Mr Hunt referred lo the fact that th income from the letting of the rooms was being devoted to 'a building fund. It was a wretched room, he said. It only held the pictures and kept the rain out. It was a disgrace to the Empire City that they had such a wrech.ed building as they were now in. When he saw the buildings in Auckland, Christchurch, and other cities—and even little Wanganui with its splendid gallery—he felt that the citizens of Wellington should feel quite ashamed of themselves that they could only produce “such a structure as this.” It was a matter, not for the Academy alone, but' for the citizens as a whole, and he hoped’they would not delay, because it was a reproach on the city. (Applause).