The exhibition is ''Wonderwall'', featuring 60 works from the gallery's permanent collections hung cheek by jowl, in no particular order, on a single wall in what the curators, Lauren Gutsell and Henry Davidson, call a ''Salon hang''.
The curators maintain this way of showing paintings, developed in the 17th century, was a way of impressing the spectator with sheer volume.
It was really a pragmatic response to the exigencies of exhibiting many works in a limited space, primarily for the purpose of selling them, best known here from its use by the Royal Academy. Once bought, the works were shown rather differently, particularly if their owners had large houses and collections.
There they would be arranged differently, sometimes dully dynastically, sometimes to celebrate events, sometimes by particular artist or nation and nearly always accompanied by furniture and sometimes things such as arms and armour.
This wasn't always done well but sometimes was spectacularly good. You can see plenty of examples in Europe.
It was this system that was adopted and adapted by museums, specifically art museums when the first were established, notably the Louvre in 1793.
Clearly, to do this, you need quite a lot of space and many objects. The Dunedin gallery has a certain amount of space - the ground-floor galleries were designed for the purpose, although at present they're being used for a non-collection show.
The gallery's permanent collections are numerous and the whole building would show only a fraction of them all. The ''fine art'' works are equalled in New Zealand only by the Auckland civic collections and, unlike Auckland's, Dunedin's holdings also include the so-called ''decorative arts''.
The good news is that, like Auckland's, the Dunedin collections are capable of giving you a sketchy impression of the entire European tradition from late medieval times to the 20th century, and include some impressive things.
They potentially offer New Zealanders their best opportunity to witness this phenomenon in their own country. The problems are, how do you do this in a limited space and without becoming boring?
The Economist's article (21.12.13-3.1.14) points out that in the past few decades, worldwide, the number of museums and their visitors have soared.
They say that, on the face of it, this seems surprising. (They are economists, you need to remember.) ''Museums used to stand for something old, dusty, boring and barely relevant to real life.''
The writer/s didn't get it. The thing museums have always had to offer and is their biggest drawcard is their authenticity.
But the writer/s are right that a revolution has happened in the way institutions do it. The Settlers is the local shining example, as is its popular success.
The art gallery and the Otago Museum are both different from the Settlers and from each other, but the Settlers' new displays are significant pointers.
The best exhibition strategy for the gallery is to deploy its European material in period rooms marching along the centuries in broad chronological order, showing how the story unfolded. (There's a comparable underlying concept at the Settlers.) It's been done before and one makes sure the ''must sees'' are all on show.
The gallery has the period furniture to do this, but you can't then let the result just stand. There are many other works that should be rotated through it so there are significant, at least monthly, changes.
This is a tried and true strategy but still needs animation. Guided tours are one means of providing it and apps have been developed that enable people to access additional material from phones and tablets. The gallery provides tours but I don't know if it's preparing digital enhancements apart from its website.
Providing the additional information the public hungers for has always been a special challenge for the gallery, because its displays are primarily aesthetic labels and wall panels are a problem.
Eighteenth-century drawing rooms did not have large wordy panels on the walls and there are comparable challenges displaying contemporary material. The gallery has become very good at overcoming them, mostly by excellent design.
The Settlers makes heavy use of touch panels, which are great for animation but would be harder to use at the gallery. If they became the main furniture, they would shatter any illusions. Intelligent design may be capable of squaring this circle.
And, of course, devices all cost money, including the human effort they require behind them. But there are ways to improve and what one can see is that we have the means to do things better.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
