The Southland Museum and Art Gallery Niho o te Taniwha is located in Gala Street, Invercargill, New Zealand. It is Southland's largest cultural and heritage institution, and contains a wide variety of the region's art, history and natural history collections. It is notable for its 1990 pyramid-shaped building, constructed over the original 1942 museum. In April 2018 the museum was closed indefinitely due to earthquake risks.
Contents
Building
The 1990 building, which encloses the previous museum building, is the largest pyramid in the Southern Hemisphere. It has a floor space of 5000 m2, is 45 by 52 metres wide and 27 metres high.
Observatory
The museum observatory, the only public observatory in Southland, was operated by members of the Southland Astronomical Society, with school groups often visiting.
Tuatara
The tuatarium facility, built in 1974 and expanded to 200 m2 in 1990, houses over 50 live, individual tuatara ranging from new babies to the famous Henry. Henry, who joined the museum in 1970, is thought to have been born around the year 1900, and holds the world record for the tuatara kept longest in captivity. Henry mated for the first time in 2009. The tuatara breed regularly every two years, and from 1989 to 1995 produced eggs annually. A new acrylic roof that allowed ultraviolet light through to the tuatara has contributed to 100% egg hatching success and 100% survival success since installation.
Galleries
The museum's Māori Gallery emphasised the everyday aspects of pre-contact life in Murihiku/(Southland). This included the processes of adze making, fishing using bone and stone lures, and musical instruments. The natural history gallery displayed rare and endangered species such as the kakapo and kiwi, as well as subfossil bones of extinct birds such as moa. This gallery also covered subjects such as geology and sea life. "Beyond the Roaring 40's Gallery" interpreted the unique and vulnerable subantarctic themes and was developed utilising both museum and Department of Conservation expertise.
A fossil forest of petrified wood exists at Curio Bay on the southeast coast of Southland. A reconstruction of this, where visitors can walk among the stumps and tree sections of petrified wood 130 million years old, can be found in front of the museum along with two-metre bronze tuatara sculpture.
Art
The art galleries featured regular contemporary and historical art exhibitions, both travelling shows and works from permanent collections, often with a regional emphasis which includes Stewart Island and the Subantarctic Islands. The museum has a significant collection of art, photography, ceramics and craft; of special note is the work by William Hodges "A Maori before a waterfall in Dusky Bay " (1773), and Te Mauri, the large pounamu boulder that travelled to America as part of the Te Maori Exhibition in 1984.
Exhibitions
Craigs Young Contemporaries
1971: Ann Crindley
1972: Bryan Poole
1973: Eve Skerrett
1974: Lindsay Hazley
1975: Janice Helm
1976: David Badcock
1977: Judith Ritchie
1978: Jeffrey Russell (Sculpture); Averill McLean (Painting); Helen de Ryk (Drawing) 1979: Erin McDermott 1980: Graham Brinsley 1981: Denise Hunter 1982: exhibition was split into two biennial exhibitions 19 to 30 and 13 to 18. 1982: Stephen Collie (age 13 – 18) 1983: Stephen Crowther (age 19 – 30) 1984: Vicki Deaker (age 13 – 18) 1985: Martin Young (age 19 – 30) 1986: Lyle Penisula (age 13 – 18) 1987: Lyle Penisula (age 19 – 30) 1988: Gaylene Barnes (age 13 – 18) 1989: No exhibition held due to the closure of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery for redevelopment 1990: Geoffrey Clarke (19–30) 1991: Jane Everett and Melanie Thomas (13–18) 1992: Louise Craig (19–30) 1993: Relda Wells (13–18) 1994: Damon Mueli (19 to 30) 1995: Bronwyn Campbell (13 to 18) 1996: Kyla Cresswell (19 to 30) 1997: Greg Lewis (15 to 30) 1998: Clem Devine
History
Southland Museum and Art Gallery Niho o te Taniwha (the tooth of the taniwha) began as a small collection first exhibited in 1869 by Andrew McKenzie in his Invercargill "Scotch Pie House and Museum". The collection was purchased by the Invercargill Athenaeum in 1876 and transferred to the Southland Technical College by 1912.
The Southland Museum was opened by Invercargill Mayor, W B Scandrett, at the Southland Technical College on Wednesday 4 September 1912 at 3pm. J Crosby Smith FLS was the President of the Southland Naturalist Society and Curator.