DANCING AT THE ART GALLERY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 192, 10 May 1921, Page 5

DANCING AT THE ART GALLERY

Sir,—l was glad to see the letter, in your issue of May 5 protesting against making the Art Gallery into a dancing saloon. Surely it is a use to which an art gallery should not be put, and will certainly interfere with tho purposes for which it was intended. How can you have specimens of statuary and works of art that require floor and table space? How would such exhibits fare on dancing nights? Has any consideration been given to the matter of dust, or of the question of allowing the hall to be draped on special occasions? I certainly think the committee has made a very false step, and one not likely to induce people to present pictures io add to the present collection. Amusement, that is the goal of almost everyone now, and to secure some more amusement an art gallery must needs ba desecrated. I suppose the teachers of dancing will say that what they teach is the art of arts that inculcates the beauties of rhythm and the poetry of motion, —see the four-year-old making for the chocolate thrown on to the stage! Surely the committee should be brought to book, and their barbarous arrangement terminated. It is said that the matter of the revenue from rent .of the hall weighed heavily in their prosaic minds, and they seized upon it without properly considering the question of. the fitness of things.—l am, etc., CHAS. P. POWLES. Wesley Road, Wellington, May 7, 1921.