Otago Settlers Museum
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The Otago Settlers Museum is a regional history museum in Dunedin, New Zealand covering the territory of the old Otago Province, New Zealand from the Waitaki River south. It is New Zealand's oldest and most extensive history museum.
Founded in 1898, the 50th anniversary of the Scottish settlement of Otago, by the Otago Early Settlers' Association, in 1908 the museum was located in a building in Queens Gardens Dunedin, designed by John Burnside. Originally concerned only with European settlers, initially just those who arrived between 1848 and the onset of the Otago gold rushes in 1861, the institution gradually enlarged its scope to include later arrivals and eventually Māori. (At that point the word 'early' was dropped from the name of the Museum and the Association.) Its collections evolved reflecting these changes but remain focused on the historical period, i.e. since James Cook's first visit to southern New Zealand in 1770.
In 1927 the museum took over the adjoining building, also designed by Burnside, vacated by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. The museum sometimes struggled financially finding little support from the city council. Comparable institutions in two other New Zealand cities, Auckland and Wellington, were closed after the second world war and their collections dispersed. The country's interest in its own history was at a low ebb. The period 1949 to 1977 has been called 'Decline and Fall?' and the institution might have died. The buildings were extensive, the collections considerable and varied, comprehending furniture, apparel, technology - including household appliances and vehicles - as well as archives and works of art. Maintenance and even heating presented formidable challenges.
In 1978 a new Director, Seddon Bennington, embarked on a programme of renewal. A later Director, Elizabeth Hinds, continued the museum's resurgence. The Dunedin City Council provided grants increasingly covering costs and in 1991 took over the museum's ownership and operation. A neighbouring building, formerly the New Zealand Railways Bus Station, designed in 1939 by James Hodge, was acquired and linked to the Burnside complex in 1994 by a concourse designed by Francis Whittaker. In 1995 the Directorship of the museum was combined with that of the art gallery, an innovation which was and remains controversial.
In 2006 the city council decided to proceed with extensive additions to the north and east of the Burnside complex to consolidate the collections on a single site and to provide better conditions for their storage and exhibition.
The museum's E class Fairlie steam locomotive Josephine is popular. Among its paintings it has works by the surveyor of Dunedin Charles Kettle, the surveyor John Buchanan, and a notable group by George O'Brien.
[edit] References
Brosnahan, S.G. (1998) To Fame Undying The Otago Settlers Association and its Museum 1898-1998 Dunedin, NZ: Otago Settlers Association. ISBN 0-473-05211-3.
