Swimming not Sinking: Refloating the Museum of Wellington City and Sea
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Article
J OUR N A L O F M USEU M S A O T E A RO A
Swimming not Sinking:
Refloating the Museum of
Wellington City and Sea
As Winston Churchill said, there are lies, damned lies
and statistics. If we only take a numbers approach,
then the re-invention of the former Wellington Maritime
Museum as the Museum of Wellington City and Sea
could be said to have been successful from a maritime
interest point of view, in terms of visitor numbers. I shall
get to the reasons why it is no longer a Maritime Museum
shortly, but at the moment it has one-third of its exhibition
space devoted to matters maritime and the Museum
ensures that at least one-third of its changing exhibitions
Paul Thompson describes and public programmes also have a maritime theme.
how changing tides turned the
Museum of Wellington City P e o p l e c o u nt o r p e o p l e
and Sea from an exclusively wh o c o u nt ?
maritime museum into a The Museum now gets about 85,000 visitors a year, as
museum for all Wellingtonians opposed to around 30,000 when it was purely a maritime
and their visitors. museum. So we can state with certainty that nearly three
times the numbers of visitors get exposure to maritime
Figure 1: Wellington Museum
of City and Sea signals its
building’s maritime origins
as a bonded warehouse by
incorporating containers into
its exterior signage.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
MUSEUM OF WELLINGTON
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J OUR N A L O F M USEU M S A O T E A RO A
stories and artefacts than did previously, but of course to its demise the WHB created a Maritime Museum Trust
there are not as many of them (stories and artefacts to continue running the museum. However the Trust
that is). Now numbers of visitors is one measure of a found, as many other museums have, that admissions
museum, but if you measure the quality of a museum by were not enough to keep afloat so, in 1996, the Maritime
the square meterage it devotes to a particular subject, Museums Trust handed over the collections and the
then changing our Museum was a retrograde step from responsibility for running the museum to the Wellington
a maritime interest point of view. However, that analysis Museums Trust – a body controlled and funded by the
would mean that a giant museum that had very few Wellington City Council.
visitors was a ‘better’ museum that a smaller one that
was packed. A s u r v e y, a r e f i t and a n e w
ta c k
There is also the small but important matter of whom the
museum is for. If we receive public funding, then we have The City Council contributed $7 million towards a $12
a duty to make it as accessible and interesting to as wide million upgrading of the Museum but wanted its mission
expanded to cover the social and cultural as well as the
a number of people as possible as it is their money, and
maritime history of Wellington. He who pays the piper
to try to deal with specialised interests with temporary
calls the tune.
shows, touring exhibitions and programmes.
Thus its new mission became:
But visitor numbers are not the only criteria of success. The preservation, presentation and promotion of
We also have other duties, such as care of, and Wellington’s history - harbour, city and sea.
accessibility to, the collections and acting as a focus
and facility for community groups. I shall address those This was a totally different brief than the Wellington
later, but first I discuss why our museum broadened, not Maritime Museum’s aim of:
abandoned, its maritime focus. Developing the Museum as one of the foremost maritime
research organizations in the South Pacific.
Chang i ng c o u r s e
To mark this change its name changed from the
Wellington Maritime Museum to The Museum of
The Wellington Maritime Museum opened in 1972 as
Wellington City and Sea (figure 1).
single room set up by the Wellington Harbour Board
(WHB), the body that operated the port. It steadily
expanded until the Harbour Board went out of existence
F r e e i ng u p th e M u s e u m
in 1989, following restructuring of local government. Prior
After the money was spent and the Museum
redeveloped, along the lines mentioned previously of
two-thirds other themes and one-third maritime exhibition
space, everybody stood back (figure 2). Visitor numbers
started high with a projection of 100,000 (never achieved)
and then steadily decreased to fewer than 40,000 per
year. Various attempts were made to halt this decline,
which was one of the issues I inherited when I took over
the directorship. I managed to obtain free admission
and that marked a massive upsurge in numbers. They
doubled. To put this in context, our Museum was the
only one that charged in the whole of Wellington and we
were 500 metres along the waterfront from Te Papa, New
Zealand’s newest and biggest museum. Te Papa not only
was free but had several cafés, specialised children’s
spaces, a strong Maori presence and a parking lot.
Figure 2: The internal structure of the bonded warehouse
frames the Museum’s Maritime Gallery.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: MUSEUM OF WELLINGTON
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J OUR N A L O F M USEU M S A O T E A RO A
Parking at our Museum remains problematic and very
expensive as all nearby parking is privately controlled
and we have no room for a cafe.
I also wrote a Strategic Plan that emphasised that,
while the mission had expanded, we were not to deny
our previous history and would keep a strong maritime
flavour. This salty flavour, and our concentration on the
city of Wellington, effectively differentiates us from Te
Papa and I believe one of the mechanisms of marketing
is to differentiate your offering from similar products.
So the Museum now has exhibitions about the history Figure 3: Tales of the city are now an integral part of the
of Wellington, war, sport, health, education, women’s Museum’s exhibition programme.
work and Maori culture, as well as shipwrecks, fishing, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: MUSEUM OF WELLINGTON
shipping, lighthouses and other maritime matters (figure
3). The Museum also manages a large conservation a submarine moored outside, thus incorporating naval
project that is preserving the remains of the Inconstant, history and Australian politics. Other maritime museums
a ship that was wrecked in Wellington in 1849. (As an have some extra factor such as being the site of Meridian
aside; is ‘Inconstant’ an appropriate name for a ship?) Zero at Greenwich, England, or the home of the Vassar
in Stockholm. So there is no one model for what makes
Temporary shows at the Museum have covered the a successful maritime museum, but it may be possible to
gamut from cartoons to rugby to Maori issues but there draw some points from our own experience.
is still this maritime flavour. And of course the Museum
maintains and increases access to the mainly maritime S u c c e s s fa c t o r s
collection. We held an exhibition of paintings of ships by
a folk artist Frank Barnes, which we promoted as being If the museum is to be a specialist museum it probably
as much about art as it was about ships (figure 4). The needs one or more of the following factors:
next show, which was for the International Festival of the 1. To be located where there is a big enough population
Arts, covered the photography of Alfred Burton on his pool or tourist trade so that, even if only a small per-
cruise to the Pacific in the SS Wairarapa in 1882 (figure centage of potential visitors are interested, there are
5). That was about colonialism and photography, as still enough of them to make the museum politically
much as it was about tourism and trade. These shows and economically sustainable. Of course, if it is run by
were followed by an exhibition on the political and social volunteers for like-minded interest groups and receives
effects of the 1913 Waterfront Strike. no public funding, then it can be located anywhere,
but I am talking about a publicly-funded museum.
Oth e r c o u r s e s 2. Have a strong reason for existence and location.
Thus a national maritime museum is usually located
Now this model is one of several courses the Museum in the capital, such as the National Maritime Museum
could have set. We could have decided instead to in Lisbon so, as Portugal was a great seafaring
undertake the redevelopment but create a fully up to date nation, this museum reflects that. Or we have whaling
and exciting maritime museum, still with a Wellington museums in Nantucket, off the US Atlantic coast, as
focus. We have examples of successful maritime that was where the American Pacific whaling industry
was based. Where we have smaller museums, such
museums not only in Auckland at Hobson’s Wharf but
as the maritime museums at Faro in Portugal or
just over the Tasman in Sydney where there is a modern
Bluff in New Zealand - places that were once thriving
National Maritime Museum. Both these museums have
maritime centres - often they are more memorials
a much wider brief than the original Wellington Maritime to past days rather than serving contemporary
Museum. In Auckland’s National Maritime Museum there needs. While, yes, historically there was maritime
is a fair amount of social history; for example, there are activity there, that is also the case for thousands and
displays on holidays at the beach and emigration. In thousands of small ports all over the world. I would
the Museum over in Darling Harbour, Sydney, there is suggest that they cannot all be turned into museums
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to use buildings that have lost their economic purpose large national museums which are as much about pride
or to merely serve as sad reminders of past glory. and identity as individual themes/subjects/disciplines, and
there are small specialist places about a single subject
3. Often a single artefact such as the Mary Rose,
such as whaling, a lifeboat service or even a single life
Henry VIII’s warship in Portsmouth, England, is
enough to base a significant museum on, whereas a such as house museums. In my own opinion it is the
miscellaneous collection of fairly standard maritime smaller places that are more interesting, but that is be-
artefacts or ship models is much more difficult, unless cause I suspect that size itself creates inertia as well as a
good strong stories are presented so that the visitors sort of bland internationalism.
can construct some meaning, as well as creating
emotional connections. M i x e d r e c e pt i o n
4. Professionalism. This is not necessarily specialized
In Wellington the transforming of our Museum to attract
maritime knowledge or interest, even though that
helps. It is people with the attitudes, skills and a wider public was not a success for those who regarded
experience who can understand the roles and it as a clubhouse or validation of their own lives and
responsibilities of a museum, and then deliver high- careers and that is sad. As an example, one retired mari-
quality services including visitor experiences, ner said to me he was so upset that we had removed
collections care and accessibility and research. More some model ships from public display that he was not go-
and more, these people are professionally trained, ing to leave his maritime collection to the Museum and
either from within the cultural sector or without. The would give it to the National Maritime Museum in
modern museum model calls for managerial staff with Auckland instead.
expertise in museums, not subject specialists. These
experts have a part to play, but often as curators, I replied that that was fine. As far as we were concerned,
researchers, conservators, historians etc. rather than
as long as it was in a publicly-owned collection
leading the museum.
somewhere being looked after and made accessible,
R o o m f o r b i g and s ma l l we could always borrow it if needed. He was astounded.
He had never thought of the bigger issues of public
Now all this raises more issues that it solves. Does the ownership, co-operation between museums and why
future of museums reside in large omnibus institutions museums actually collect and display things and who
that try and be all things to all peoples or is there room pays for them.
for thousands of small specialist museums and single
theme museums? I would suggest both – there are the Once we moved from funding by a maritime interest body
to public funding, then it was inevitable that the Maritime
Figure 4: Frank Barnes’ art work depicting New Zealand’s Museum in its traditional form was on the skids. The
second hospital ship Marama off Sinclair Head, Wellington, maritime lobby had not the financial resources or the
1915. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: MUSEUM OF WELLINGTON political clout to resist. The only chance for the Museum
to remain purely maritime would have been to present a
convincing case to the funders that overrode the desire of
the City Council to incorporate the history of the city.
T h e v o yag e ah e ad
So is there a future for maritime museums? – yes,
there is, but what form it takes, I haven’t a clue. Each
museum needs to respond to its purpose and unique
local circumstances. In fact there are a whole range of
possibilities: They encompass large national museums,
specialist museums, volunteer-run local sites or it may
be that a hybrid model like ours that widens potential
audiences is a good way to go. As we have demonstrated
to all but the most purist and die-hard, broadening our
focus did not mean jettisoning our past.
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Figure 5: The bustle of shipboard action is captured in an
image by the Burton brothers in 1884, whose collection is
treasured by the Museum. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: MUSEUM
OF WELLINGTON
I mentioned a mariner who was very upset about our loss
of maritime exclusivity; he was only one of many old salts
and those with a very strong interest in the sea who were
upset. However the Museum now has a very constructive
relationship with maritime interest groups who have their
own organization – The Maritime Friends of the Museum
of Wellington City and Sea. This group actively assists in
both programming and fundraising and they have their
own lounge. But it is interesting looking at the Museum’s
visitation records; we were only getting - on average -
a couple of visits a week from maritime members so,
while they are supportive, they do not actually visit the
museum very often. I would suggest it is because they
are interested in ships, not museums.
Paul Thompson, the Director of the Museum of Wellington
City and Sea at the time of this presentation, left the position
in 2006 to concentrate on his own creative projects.
That said, he remains vitally interested and involved in
the cultural sector, being a member of the Libraries and
Information Commission and consults widely on museums
and related matters.
This paper was originally written as notes and a prompt for a presentation at an International Conference of Maritime Museums held in
Auckland in November 2005 and is largely unmodified.
UPDATE:
Brett Mason, current Director of the Museum of Wellington City and Sea, provides this update:
Since Paul gave his talk the Museum of Wellington has gone even further in its focus as a community museum of social history. Paul’s
lasting legacy for the Museum is two-fold one in an insistence in professionalism in all aspects of our work and, secondly, as a Museum
that pushes the boundaries of the expected in its programming. It is not so much that we show exhibitions that are any different from
what can be found in other museums in New Zealand but in our presentation.
For each exhibition programmed, we look at how we can push a perceived or imagined boundary for how a visitor will experience the
subject. A great example is War in Paradise, the story of New Zealand soldiers in New Caledonia during World War II. We did not
explore the obvious story of the war, but rather the relationships of the New Zealanders with the Kanak, Caldoche and other peoples
of New Caledonia. But more than that, we created an installation which had a specially commissioned soundscape by Plan 9 and
contemporary images by Paul projected within the space. Alongside this total experience we worked with Footnote Dance on
performances within the installation that, for one reviewer, were the best dance work in Wellington of 2007.
te ara - journal of museums aotearoa, Vol 32 (1&2) PAGE 13You can also read
