Farewell your museum favourites
What’s your favourite exhibit at Canterbury Museum? The horse in the Christchurch Street? Ed Hillary’s tractor in the Antarctic Gallery? The Huia in the Bird Hall? One of the taonga in Ngā Taonga Tuku Iho o Ngā Tūpuna? Whatever your top pick is, the time has come to visit it before the Museum closes for its long-awaited redevelopment.
The Museum’s $205 million revamp will see the heritage buildings protected and enhanced, the earthquake-damaged 20th-century buildings replaced, facilities modernised, and most of the site base-isolated to protect Canterbury’s taonga against future quakes.
The Museum will be closed for up to five years, although a smaller, temporary Museum will pop up in the central city next year. Staff have already started packing down the galleries, and some of the upstairs galleries, including Geology, Discovery, Our Mummy, and Ivan Mauger Speedway King, have closed.
November will see the remainder of the upstairs section close, with the pack down starting on Asian Arts and Living Canterbury on 7 November and the Antarctic Gallery closing on 21 November. Work on the downstairs galleries will begin in December. Many of the Museum’s much-loved taonga (treasures) will return in the new Museum, so this isn’t goodbye – just ‘see you later’. Visit the Museum’s website for updates.