ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM

Evening Post, Issue 28, 1 August 1936, Page 10

ART GALLERY AND MUSEUM

OFFICIAL OPENING CEREMONY

PERFORMED BY GOVERNOR-GENERAL

Today, in the formal opening of the National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum by his Excellency the Governor-General, Viscount Galway, to the people of New Zealand, an ideal has been achieved and this country enters upon a stage of higher cultural development. Splendid as the buildings themselves are and important as it is that New Zealand should possess buildings in which art objects and the tangible records of progress may be housed through the long years ahead, _far more important is this national group as the cultural centre of the Dominion, a symbol of national pride in the past, and a determination that upon the as yet short traditions of past years the future shall be guided towards, an ideal. The public halls and galleries are spacious, and in them are exhibited. pictures and collections of high value, objects that are irreplaceable, but this, after all, is a small part of the full conception. The appreciation of the exhibitions in the Art Gallery extends far beyond that of an afternoon of delight for the visitor, in the high educational value of pictures to students, and behind the. halls and public galleries of the Museum a staff of workers will carry on quiet inquiries, perhaps of slight, if any, interest to those who pass through as visitors, but of vital importance in that from their work some addition is made to the world's knowledge.

The Art Gallery and Museum are national, for the enjoyment and benefit of the people of the Dominion. Never has Wellington regarded them from a narrow view as Wellington's possessions, yet this city and province may rightly take pride in the fact that their response to what was in fact a challenge from a former Government has made possible the materialisation of a long-held wish thafa National Group should be erected. When, in 1919 and again in 1928, the Governments proposed that Wellington should find, pound for pound with the State, a sum adequate for the erection of a fully worthy National Art Gallery and Museum^ the offer was regarded by many as a gesture, as something of which advantage could not be taken in the face of impossible difficulties. But under the leadership of a former Mayor, Mr. G. A. Troup, Wellington City and Province accepted that challenge in a spirit of fine civic pride, and today takes a higher pride still in a national as well as a civic achievement. • v