Art is not a cure for the ills of the world, but it can be a great solace.
On St Patrick's day your columnist set out in steady rain and under low cloud to look at some shows. It was mild and the rain was not heavy but the weather was sombre, like my mood.
Perhaps it was projection, but it seemed others were similarly subdued. It's seemed like that for a while, even under bright sunlight. The mortality and devastation in Christchurch has affected the general mood.
And then the new, epic disaster in Japan, with its even greater carnage and the eerie hazard of radiation, was another shock.
The headlines that morning were of radiation surging, a rare public address by the Japanese emperor, above a photograph of orange-suited rescuers marching through a ruined landscape in Sendai, in a blizzard. Our city is not afflicted, but this background does not produce a jaunty mood.
A friend emerged from the Municipal Chambers, a building site during its upgrade. It is being reinforced further against earthquakes. It could become a noble but single survivor while some of its later neighbours succumb in a big event.
I didn't go to the Temple Gallery because I'd been there the night before at the well-attended opening of Peter Nicholls' show "As it is on Earth".
The mood was upbeat, though subdued, and in the very subdued light of the gallery, almost reverent. Nicholls' beautifully polished slabs were the spotlighted centrepiece with a small carved kiwi in among them. It was elemental, lovely, and very apt.
But on the morning of my tour I went to the public gallery specifically to revisit "A La Mode". This is an exhibition of early 19th century fashion plates and some delightful contemporary accessories; a parasol, lorgnettes, fans.
These elegant, understated, slightly wacky images were just the meed I sought for my mood. They are suitably distant in time, and charming, reminding one that people don't change. And that it's chic to perch a parrot on your shoulder, although it surely has some limitations as a costume accessory.
I strolled again through "Beloved", revisiting dear old friends.
But then there was Fiona Amundsen's heart-stopper, her exhibition "The First City in History".
It consists of large colour photographs of Hiroshima, the first city destroyed by an atomic weapon.
The city is quintessentially modern, urban Japan; and the images capture this as surely as a Hiroshige print captures old Edo, to use Tokyo's earlier name. There is a rawness, a brutality in the modern Japanese cityscape, with its crowded concrete, bridges, expressways and heavily channelled streams.
But there is a beautiful texture in the stonework of the embankments setting off the smoother concrete all around. And just a very few trees, cryptomeria, willow, adding the lightest, natural blusher to the austere, urban face.
The buildings are nearly all modern, of course, and some of them boldly Modernist. And the newspaper photograph of ruined Sendai was very fresh in my mind. Despite all the violent associations, Amundsen's images were a balm; grave, beautiful and reassuring, portraying this city rebuilt from annihilation, as forcefully dynamic and as delicately Japanese as ever.
At the Otago Museum the relics of a disappeared civilisation seemed a little more sure of their future. A few of the ancient Greek painted vases are secured by plastic holders I don't recall seeing before.
After the September earthquake the Logie collection of similar ceramics in Christchurch was put into storage while damage is repaired. Safe storage, we have been told. There's been no news of them since February 22. Let's hope the storage really is safe. It would be tragic to lose any more of these elegant, figured survivors, so old, so contemporary, so timeless.
And for the first time in a long time, the museum has more of its antique European furniture on show in "Finely Furnished, the Creation and Decoration of Furniture".
Many pieces are old favourites and the 18th century French marble-topped bombe chest is an old friend. It was on loan to the public gallery for years. I used to dust it with a feather duster every day. It's a very fine, French grande dame and couldn't be seen in public with motes or scurf on its shoulders.
Another exhibition, "Mo Tatou", tells another ancient story - of Maori in this southern land. The rare Tahei, necklace, is on loan from the Southland Museum. Its moa bone elements, carved to look like whale teeth and made about 1150 AD, are beautifully formed.
I continued my tour but my mood was changed. In the midst of disaster, beauty, ancient and modern, is a balm. The Fringe Festival started that day.
• Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
