Fri, 27 Nov 2009 9:26p.m.
By Tova O’Brien
Over the past decade Wellington’s Museum of City and Sea has built up quite an eclectic collection.
What better way for a museum to celebrate its 10th birthday than with an antiques road show of its very own? For this particular museum, with a collection of over 60,000 objects, the grand total would be something close to priceless.
Of putting a value on the museums collection, Dunbar Sloan auctioneer Anthony Gallagher says it would be “into the hundreds of thousands of dollars”.
“There’s just far too much to put an overall figure on,” he says.
If you’re thinking stuffy artefacts gathering dust and mothballs – think again.
“I think that museums have moved a long way and that they’re listening to a lot of people about what their stories are and trying to explore those stories – they’re not just the authority anymore,” says Museum Director Brett Mason.
Like most museums, the majority of the treasures lie tucked away in storage. But choosing the 300 pieces for the Alice in Wonderland-themed anniversary exhibition was not as hard as you might think.
“If you work here every day there will be objects you take a favour to that you really want to put on display – so it wasn’t too difficult really,” says Collections Manager Dean Miller.
“Even if there was no real reason why we wanted them in the show – ‘it’s my favourite, so I’m putting it in’,” he says.
So there’s the favourites, and there’s the weird.
“I guess we were kind of looking at the crazy, the quirky, the eclectic objects – we wanted to make sure that what people saw when they came into the exhibition was the best of the best, and the strangest objects as well,” says programmes manager David Waller.
Which means that everything from unassuming high chairs to sailor dolls are more than meets the eye.
“Back in the 1930s the zoo had tea parties with their chimps, we’ve got a donation from the zoo in the show, which is a chimp party chair,” says Mr Waller.
If you want a piece of the action, the collection will be on display until May next year.
3 News
