Old ideas have a habit of hanging about, some of them good and some of them bad. Recently, one bad one concerning our museums has been heading into retreat while a good one is showing a little promise.
It was reported (ODT, 8.4.14) that Toitu Otago Settlers Museum will soon advertise for a new director to replace Linda Wigley, who left about six months ago, and also that the settlers museum and the Otago Museum were pursuing closer links in the form of more co-operation.
It was mentioned too, that while the idea of maintaining two separate institutions with a single senior director based at the Otago Museum had been discussed by staff at the two museums, it had been decided this was not to be pursued.
People will recall that from a time in the 1990s, until well into this century, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and what was then called the Otago Settlers Museum had a single director, in fact the head of the gallery.
The first person to hold this office, John McCormack, advised the city council it wasn't a good idea when he resigned the position but it took several more years before the council re-established a separate directorship for the settlers museum.
Even as it did, the idea was reborn in a different form at the Otago Museum, this time with a view to its taking over the settlers museum as a subordinate outstation.
The gallery and the settlers museum at least had the same owner, the Dunedin City Council. The Otago Museum has its own trust board, albeit mainly funded by the city council, so the idea was fairly outlandish.
It can seem to some that since these institutions are all rather similar, wouldn't it be smart - and cheaper - to have them all managed by a single person.
At one time, the late George Griffiths thought it would be even better to have them all on one site under a single roof.
He retreated from the idea when he became aware of the staggering capital cost of realising it made evident when the National Gallery and National Museum were amalgamated and housed in a new building together as Te Papa on the waterfront in Wellington.
If one were starting from scratch in Dunedin, one might entertain such an idea, but in fact we have three large, more than century-old institutions each on its own separate site, each with nationally significant collections and each with fairly well-defined and different briefs.
To put them under a single director is likely to subordinate the interest of one to another. It is widely believed this happened to the arts interest at Te Papa.
When I talked a while ago with the Otago Museum's new director, Ian Griffin, he didn't favour that idea. Clearly, the settlers' staff don't either. It has wisely been abandoned, which by itself will make closer co-operation easier.
We also discussed another old idea aimed at achieving more and more equitable funding. New Zealand's big museums, with their nationally and internationally significant collections, are geographically, but not demographically, well distributed.
The Auckland Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand in Wellington, the Canterbury Museum and the Christchurch Art Gallery in Christchurch and the Otago Museum, the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Toitu Otago Settlers museum have broadly comparable holdings and in their different configurations, cover the same briefs.
Their funding bases differ wildly.
The Auckland, Canterbury and Otago Museums are funded by their provinces or regions - or part of their region in our case. The galleries in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin are funded by their cities and Dunedin city solely funds the settlers museum.
In Wellington, the central government funds the lion's share of Te Papa while little central government money trickles to Auckland, Christchurch or Dunedin.
If this were how health or education was funded people would be up in arms. The idea of having one tax-funded hospital in Wellington with rates-funded hospitals in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin would be justifiably seen as wildly unjust but this is how we fund our museums.
There is some awareness of this absurdity, which Auckland has managed to exploit to get a Te Papa storage facility being set up in their city.
I said to Dr Griffin that while Dunedin's political voice may be weak alone, here we share a common cause with Canterbury and Auckland. If our local politicians and MPs joined their voices to those of Canterbury and Auckland, they'd be speaking for most of the country.
They could advocate a nationally funded museum service such as those in the Netherlands and Denmark.
I said I'd raise it with a city councillor. I have and got a good reception. They thought the idea was timely.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
