NO WELLINGTON YOU CANNOT HAVE ANOTHER PIECE OF OUR CAKE

Cultural Curmudgeon Hamish Keith is most unhappy and The Bookman reckons he makes a valid argument.

The idea being floated by the chair and board members of Te Papa that they should spend $100 million of our money to build a new National Art Gallery, next door to the one one that they already spent $300 million on and got wrong, would be a grand joke if it were not outrageous.
The Dominion Post floats the argument that since they [Te Papa] have struggled to make their museum fit the "role of a national art gallery" they have had to stick it in the attic and should now be allowed to build a real national art gallery, is breathtakingly wrong.


Te Papa was to be built as the national museum and the national art gallery.
The board and the government got it wrong.
They were told they were going to get it wrong.
They went ahead any way.

The original concept of the Museum of New New Zealand was for a family of four museums sharing some common facilities but each with its own separate museum function.
One of those was the national art gallery.
That idea was dumped in favour of some all-purpose, iconic building in which the art had to find a place in the attic because nobody had thought better where it might go.
Nobody made the Te Papa board do that.
It did it to itself.
It did not listen to any criticism or accept any professional input.
In fact it sacked from its staff and from its board anyone who said the idea would fail.
Te Papa has failed the nation's art.
And we are now asked to cough up $100 million to solve the problems Te Papa built.
No.
Think again.
There are much better ways of delivering the nation's art collections to the nation that owns them than building yet another monument to the Wellington brand.
For $100 million we could build fine exhibition halls in Auckland and Christchurch and show the nation's art to most of it population.
We could build those around a genuinely national museum service which could show works from those collections everywhere galleries exist - which is every where in this country.

The wretched thing about all this is that Te Papa has not only failed as an art museum it has failed as a museum per se.
It is a mall not a museum.
New Zealanders deserves more than that.