NZ’s 100s of Museums, Art Galleries - Museum Day

MEDIA RELEASE

TUESDAY 15th MAY 2007

New Zealand’s Hundreds of Museums and Art Galleries – International Museum Day

New Zealand has over 500 museums, galleries and related organisations – that is approximately one for every 8,000 New Zealanders. We have more than twice as many museums per head of population as Canada or the UK, and five times as many as France or Sweden. We are overtaken by Iceland with one for every 5,500 of its 280,000 people!

Our museum sector consists of a wide range of organisations collecting, protecting, interpreting and providing access to the collections of taonga, archives, creative arts, and artefacts distributed across the country.

A recent survey by Museums Aotearoa shows that culture and heritage is a growing part of our identity and our economy. A handful of our museums have been around for more than 100 years, but over a third of our museums and galleries have been established in the past 50 years, with more than one in 10 less than five years old. They employ over 3,000 staff and 7-10,000 volunteers.

While most of our small museums attract less than 5,000 visitors a year, the total number of museum visits is now estimated to be over 9 million. And although over half of our small museums operate on less than $20,000, the combined operating expenditure for the sector is likely to be over $200 million a year. (The survey results are downloadable from www.museums-aotearoa.org.nz)

While further research is necessary to refine these statistics, it is clear that heritage is important to New Zealand. As well as providing jobs and contributing to the economy, museums are important to their communities and to the country as a whole. Local, regional and national museums and art galleries are public assets which enrich our lives. As kaitiaki of local and national cultural heritage they ensure that richness is shared and preserved for future generations.

This Friday, 18 May is International Museum Day, which has been celebrated around the world since 1977. Each year a theme is selected by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), to be interpreted and promoted locally. The 2007 theme of ‘Museums and Universal Heritage’ is timely as access to information becomes global, yet in many parts of the world our material heritage and culture are in grave danger. In New Zealand we are fortunate to have thousands of dedicated people in hundreds of museums looking after our heritage. Their collections and exhibitions are all parts of our national cultural heritage, and as such are important to the heritage of humanity as a whole.

This week many of our museums and galleries are celebrating International Museum day with special events. Auckland and Canterbury Museums are offering behind the scenes curators tours for a first-hand look at little-known treasures. Howick Historical Village has a ‘Live Day’ with a Victorian wedding theme – look out for other events at your local museum, see www.museums-aotearoa.org.nz or www.nzlive.com.

Join in this weekend to celebrate our cultural heritage: to learn from the past, encounter the present, and enrich our lives for the future.

ENDS

© Scoop Media