The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1912. THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1416, 17 April 1912, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1912. THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

Thejie can be few of our cit: • who do not wish success Jo lb tempi, now being made va i S( public fund of A,r>ooo fav the cs lishnient of the nucleus of a Natio. Art Gallery. The subscriptions j.: coming in very well indeed, althour ■ more slowly than the subscriptions t othcy public funds; and wc do noi doubt that when the idea really grips the public miud, as it certainly will, the city will respond quite as generously as it ought. Already the fund amounts to not very much less than £1000 or its equivalent, if we include, on a rough average estimate, the promises given in terms of pictures rather than'cash. There is one thing wc should like to emphasise—it doe's nob matter if it is taken as a friendly criticism of the methods of those who have charged themselves with this worthy labour—and it is this: that the generous size of almost all | the contributions already acknowledged may a little deter the people with limited purses from giving the smaller sums that they would like to give. "While we a> c all grateful to the generous donors of substantial sums, wc should like to have it emphasised chat shillings and halfaro also precious. Some of our friends in the other cities are watching the progress of the fund with an interest not altogether sympathetic. Wellington to them is a Philistia in which the inhabitants have no souls—a home of bargaining and politics in which Beauty starves and shivers in some neglected garret. Nothing could bo further from the truth. What our city does, unhappily, suffer from is the weakness of its corporate conscience. The present movement is exactly one that might unite the citizens, and it will unite theiy, so soon as people generally understand that by co-operation they can call into being a quite new ind gracious public treasure. There are good art galleries in the other cities, but a real national art gallery is something New Zealand has never had. Once established, it will grow and grow under the hands of enthusiastic lovers of good pictures, and we can sec a time when it will be one of the most treasured of our public institutions. To secure that it shall come into existence, however, it is necessary that the present movement shall succeed, and the support extended by the Chamber of Commerce will materially help towards success. The Chamber has given itself so few opportunities to identify itself with large public interests outside the immediate circle of commerce that its action in taking up the Art Gallery movement is the more creditable and gratifying. Wellington has in the past, as we hinted in our opening sentence, shown itself capable of enthusiasm for worthy public objects, and the present object is as worthy as any that can be named. Perhaps, the establishment of a National Art Gallery will not f(ii"inany years produce any good results upon New Zealand art, but it will all the time discharge the silent mission of giving pleasure to unending thousands of people and of dumbly preaching the gospel of beauty to them. Everyone who assists the fund, whether by guineas or by shillings, will help in securing for our city the credit of repairing at last one of the largest of our national omissions. To raise the £5000 is the best thing the city can do, and we trust that the conductors of the campaign for funds will leave untried no means of canvass. The willingness and ability to raise the money exists—they have only to he tapped.