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02/11/2026

Save the McDougall Campaign

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Hello everyone,

Our petition this week has progressed to 1470 with once again petitioners saying how much they used to love it as a building in the past. It lost the city’s art collection in 2002 prior to the opening of the new Christchurch Art Gallery and, if it re-opens in 2029 as planned, it would have been unused as a public art gallery for 27 years! No wonder a lot of our petitioners are remembering it from when they were a child!

While it did have to be earthquake strengthened like all other public buildings it has only been closed for so long because it has been incorporated into the Museum project which has required its basement to be deepened to the same level as the Museum’s basement for their use. As the ground level at the front door of the Gallery is one metre lower than the front door of the Museum on Rolleston Avenue, the Gallery’s basement will be one metre deeper than the Museum’s which will enable them to store their tallest objects.

The Museum Director, Anthony Wright, has just reported on the latest progress involving the Museum and Gallery basements which suggest that it is likely the McDougall should be ready to open in 2029 even if the Museum opening is delayed further. Given this, because the McDougall is a public art gallery owned by the Council on behalf of the city’s art lovers, the Museum has a duty to let these citizens know how it is going to be used in the years ahead and what art it is intending to display in it.

The really concerning thing about its future use is the fact that when the 50 year lease agreement was entered into with the Museum, the Christchurch City Council got Parliament to replace the existing McDougall Act with another one to give the Museum the right to use the Gallery not only for fine arts but also for their arts and crafts which would involve three dimensional objects. To better reflect this, the Museum requested that the gallery’s name be changed to the Robert McDougall Gallery rather than Art Gallery. Instead, being part of Canterbury Museum, you would think any name change would have been to the Robert McDougall Art Museum!
This potentially leaves the city’s art lovers in an uncertain situation as the Museum could to some extent dishonour the terms of Robert McDougall’s gift of the gallery to them as recorded on the gallery’s foundation stone. And as we have seen with the Christchurch Art Gallery, if this was to occur, it is unlikely the city’s councillors or their managers would take any interest in the matter.

This is the matter that the city’s art lovers will want the Museum to clarify. As I have mentioned before, their deputy director Sarah Murray, has already very kindly invited me to have some initial discussions with her concerning its future use as the city’s gallery for historical art from all potential available sources including their own extensive collection. And as a result, I have already posted the first works they have selected from their collection as being considered suitable for display in the inaugural hang and here are the last two of these works which are interesting:

The Great Fire in Lyttelton 25 October 1870 Henry William Raworth 1871

William Henry Raworth who painted ‘Great Fire in Lyttelton 25 October 1870’ was one of the earliest artists living in Canterbury, arriving in 1850 with the first settlers. He likely witnessed the fire in Lyttelton and this is perhaps the first documentation of a disaster event in Canterbury.

Pigeon Bay 1881 watercolour on paper Thomas Cane

The watercolour ‘Pigeon Bay’ painted by Thomas Cane in 1881 shows a bucolic scene as rain passes over the tiny Banks Peninsula community. Cane was an architect, and was the Canterbury Provincial Architect from 1874 to 1876. Among his designs was Corfe House at Christ’s College. Apart from his practice in architecture, Cane was an accomplished watercolourist, and was recognised during his life in Canterbury for his skill in the watercolour medium.
Both historical paintings tell a story. One is a drama about the worst conflagration in Canterbury’s early years and the second gives an impression of a quiet scene in a remote country settlement where the most important and yet uncertain event is the change in the weather.

The McDougall Art Gallery was gifted to the city’s art lovers by Robert McDougall (1860-1942) in order that the city could establish its own art collection from initial gifts promised by the Canterbury Society of Arts and the Jamieson Family and other private donors. Its foundation stone says it was gifted to the citizens of Christchurch. It is owned by them. But it has been leased to Canterbury Museum by the Christchurch City Council on their behalf for 50 years. It is essential that when it opens in 2029 the citizens ensure that Canterbury Museum use it for the purposes it was designed, built and gifted for – namely the display of all of the city’s historical art.

If you wish to see the McDougall Art Gallery, when it reopens, used only for the historical art owned by the city as a whole and any works that can be borrowed in from other galleries and private collections, it is imperative you sign my petition.

The link is:

Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz

Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.
Thank you everyone for your support.

Tim Seay

Save the McDougall Campaign 2 November 2026

22/10/2026

Save the McDougall Campaign

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Hello everyone,

Over the last week 25 signatories have signed our petition – mainly Christchurch art lovers – and it now stands at 1455. One signatory mentioned how much they used to enjoy being taken to the McDougall by their grandmother when a child. It is amazing that it has not shown any of the city’s art since 2002 when it closed and been closed for so long since that she could almost be a grandmother herself when it reopens 27 years later in 2029! Once again, many petitioners emphasised how much they love it as a heritage building. Thank you for your comments. I only wish I could show them to my grandfather. He always wanted it to be a little gem.

Last week I said the McDougall Art Gallery when it finally reopens will be able to display a total of 300 paintings in its thirteen neo classical galleries. The correct figure is actually 200 works. I apologise for this error.

When the gallery opened in 1932 only 154 oil paintings and watercolours were initially installed but later in that year 28 more were added from the Jamieson Collection which made a total of 182. But as you can see from the plan of the gallery below two bays on the eastern (back) side of the gallery had no works installed which means its capacity is around 200 paintings. While that is a third less than I thought, it is still a huge increase on the 80 historical works capacity that the Christchurch Art Gallery was built to provide as we discussed last week.

So, when it re-opens it will create a capacity for the city’s two galleries between them to display 280 historical works at anyone time to the art loving public out of a total city owned historical collection of 684 oil paintings and 450 watercolours for a total of 1134 plus 450 drawings and 1355 prints plus the addition of the further works that have been acquired since 2006.

So based on the collection of oil and watercolour works as at 2006, the capacity of both galleries to display the city’s historical oils and watercolours at anyone time will be 280 divided by 1134 which is 24.5%. But allowing for the increase in the collection since then it is probably no better than 20%.

But now we have to also provide for the Museum’s collection which we have previously considered could be around 80 works that are of a public art gallery standard. That will reduce the 20% further.

The opening plan of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery in 1932. The numbers shown in each gallery are the numbers of paintings originally installed in each individual gallery.

If the Museum could provide 80 paintings of a public art gallery standard from their collection this would leave 120 works able to be displayed in the McDougall from the city’s collection stored at the Christchurch Art Gallery. So, the two galleries between them would be able to hang 200 works from the city’s collection and 80 from the Museum’s collection for a total 280.

The display in the McDougall could also include works from other galleries in the country such as Auckland, Te Papa and Dunedin galleries but it is expected these would be very small as lending between galleries does not now take place very often. But some works would very likely be lent to the McDougall to celebrate its opening.

So, the end result will be that the two galleries will between them be able to display 280 historical paintings at anyone time compared with the 80 that the Christchurch Art Gallery should have been displaying in the past but are now doing as a result of their latest display in the downstairs Sutton Gallery. Whatever way you look at it, the reopening of the McDougall will provide a dramatic improvement for the city to display its historical paintings in its two art galleries.

And here are two paintings from the city’s collection that have actually been shown on occasions over recent years that are presently shown in the Timeless Treasures exhibition:

Sunny Italy 1910 Robert Proctor (1879-1931) oil on canvas presented by Canterbury Society of Arts 1932

Panier de Raisins 1893 oil on canvas Henri Fantin Latour (1836-1904) Frank White bequest 2001

The Christchurch Art Gallery, run as a public art gallery, can only display a very small part of the city’s historical collection, so when the McDougall reopens with its display capacity of 200 paintings, how it is used will become a vital question for the city and its art lovers.

The McDougall Art Gallery was gifted to the city’s art lovers by Robert McDougall (1860-1942) in order that the city could establish its own art collection from initial gifts promised by the Canterbury Society of Arts and the Jamieson Family and other private donors. Its foundation stone says it was gifted to the citizens of Christchurch. It is owned by them. But it has been leased to Canterbury Museum by the Christchurch City Council on their behalf for 50 years. It is essential that when it opens in 2029 the citizens ensure that Canterbury Museum use it for the purposes it was designed, built and gifted for – namely the display of all of the city’s historical art.

If you wish to see the McDougall Art Gallery, when it reopens, used only for the historical art owned by the city as a whole and any works that can be borrowed in from other galleries and private collections, it is imperative you sign my petition.

The link is:

Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz

Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.

Thank you everyone for your support.

Tim Seay

Save the McDougall Campaign 23rd October 2026

12/10/2026

Save the McDougall Campaign

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Hello everyone,

Only one person – a Christchurch resident - has signed our petition this week but they made an excellent comment. They said “it is important that we retain culturally important buildings and we want our historic paintings displayed in the place that was designated for this purpose….”. In other words, when the McDougall reopens it should become the city’s home for our historical art. They are absolutely right.

The reason for this is because the McDougall is the best neo classical art gallery in the country and therefore most suited to displaying such works. It can display 300 historical paintings in one hang. I do not have the latest number of historical works in the city’s collection but back in 2006 there were 684 oil paintings and 450 watercolours for a total of 1134. There were also 450 drawings and 1355 prints. These numbers have been added onto substantially since. So, there is no shortage of works to be displayed in it when it reopens. And Canterbury Museum will also have some of their collection to display.

At the moment in the Christchurch Art Gallery there are 59 historical works on display in the downstairs Sutton Gallery and about 30 in one of the upstairs galleries for a total of 89 works which is almost 8% of the total historical and watercolour collection back in 2006 which is now a much better proportion than shown previously.

So how should the public expect the Christchurch Art Gallery to be run?

-it comprises 10 dedicated exhibition spaces totaling 2950 sq m with 4 galleries on the ground floor and 6 on the first floor.

- by having large collections of both historical and contemporary art works it is by definition a museum of art and with that comes a responsibility not only to many donors but also the citizens of Christchurch. As a result:

- it is incumbent on the gallery that they show collection works both historical and contemporary rotationally all the time.

-this means that the first floor of the gallery should have on view an equitable representation of both historical and contemporary New Zealand and international art works from the collections.

- as part of this, a number of the best and most valuable historical works should remain on show permanently.

-at any one time the gallery should aim at installing and have on permanent exhibition around 80 historical and 80 contemporary works - at least 7 to 8% of the current historical collection holdings.

- the ground floor galleries were originally designed to be used for temporary and visiting exhibitions – a balance expected by the visiting public.

The good news is that at today’s figure of 89 historical works on display the gallery is showing, according to my calculations, about the number it should be and was designed for. That is a huge improvement. But they should still aim to have a group of the best and most valuable historical works on permanent display.

And here are a couple of the historical paintings in Timeless: Treasures from the Historical Collection in the downstairs Sutton Gallery:

Teresena c1874 oil on canvas Lord Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) presented by Canterbury Society of Arts 1932 to the McDougall Art Gallery.

Making Ligurian Lace c1905 oil on canvas Henry La Thangue (1859-1929) Purchased by the Canterbury Society of Arts, 1912, with the J T Peacock bequest; presented to the McDougall Art Gallery 1932. This is another painting donated originally by a member of my family.

Both of these works are magnificent paintings. All public collections of art have major and minor works and it is a gallery’s responsibility that the best are always able to be seen. Both of these paintings were part of the Gallery’s foundation collection and are deserving of having a permanent place in gallery space. The painting ‘Teresina’ in particular, by Frederic Leighton, is by one of the great masters of British art of the Victorian era and whilst it is good to see it up for ‘Timeless Treasures’ it should not remain mostly hidden in a storeroom as it has over the past 20 years.

The Christchurch Art Gallery, run as a public art gallery, can only display a very small part of the city’s historical collection, so when the McDougall reopens with its display capacity of 300 paintings, how it is used will become a vital question for the city and its art lovers.

If you wish to see the McDougall Art Gallery, when it reopens, used only for the historical art owned by the city as a whole and any works that can be borrowed in from other galleries it is imperative you sign my petition. The link is:

Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz

Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.

Thank you everyone for your support.

Tim Seay

Save the McDougall Campaign 13th October 2026

04/10/2026

Save the McDougall Campaign

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Hello everyone,

Our petition has only advanced to 1425 this week and unfortunately the signatory did not record their name or their city. As I have emphasised before it is important for people to record their name and also where they live.

It is important before the McDougall reopens for the city’s art lovers, who were gifted this beautiful building, to make their views well known as to how they want the Museum and Council to run it by signing the petition.

The only news I am aware of this past week was an article in the Press on Friday 2nd October by Jaenine Parkinson, chief executive of Museums Aotearoa, concerning the remaining financing of Canterbury Museum’s redevelopment project headed “Deeper debate needed on funding model”. Essentially, she was saying that museum projects like this to preserve our cultural history are sufficiently important to our future to warrant the same support from both local and central government as other essential infrastructure projects. In other words, the Christchurch Council and the Government between them should meet the remaining financial cost of the project.

In the meantime, neither seem willing to provide further funding and the Council is hoping the Government will, as part of their election campaigning, provide further funding over the next few weeks. We will have to wait until after the election to learn how this will all work out but it would seem inevitable costs could have blown out further due to increasing construction and manufacturing expenses resulting from the Iran War.

The Museum is continuing to sort out further paintings from their collection that are of a public art gallery standard to show in the McDougall. They have a large art collection from which to select suitable works that will over time make a useful contribution to the city’s overall historical art collection. They have a lot of portraits left to them by people who wanted their family records preserved. Here are another two such works they have selected:

Portrait of Artist’s Mother oil on canvas by Archibald Nicoll

Portrait of Thomas Cass 1868 oil on canvas by Samuel Butler

Thomas Cass (1817–1895) was a pioneer surveyor and a leader in early Canterbury. He served as the Canterbury Chief Surveyor from 1851 to 1867.

In the meantime, before the McDougall reopens it is important the city’s art lovers, who were gifted this beautiful building, make their views well known as to how they want the Museum and Council to run it by signing the petition. It has been leased to Canterbury Museum for 50 years and they don’t have an historical art collection of a public art gallery standard of a sufficient size to utilise the gallery as the city has.

What they do have is a substantial collection of historical works, largely watercolours, which have been in storage for many years because the Museum has never had the facilities to display them or the funding from the Council to carry out the necessary conservation work required on many of them.

Having the McDougall incorporated into the redeveloped Museum will provide the Museum with the incentive to start displaying their collection. The lease agreement allows for the Museum of course to borrow historical works from the city’s collection stored at the Christchurch Art Gallery and from any other available source so that the gallery can be used for the purposes for which it was designed and built and gifted – namely the display of the city’s historical art.

What is important is that the Museum do not use it instead for other purposes such as the display of other objects in the Museum’s collection which would dishonour the terms of Robert McDougall’s gift to the people of Christchurch. It is the best neo classical art gallery in the country and its proper use in terms of its architectural and cultural heritage as recorded in its Conservation Plan is the display of historical art.

This is the reason why it is important that before the gallery reopens the city’s art lovers show the Council and the Museum that they wish the McDougall to continue to be the main art gallery where the city’s historical art is displayed.

If you wish to see the McDougall Art Gallery, when it reopens, used only for the historical art owned by the city as a whole it is imperative you sign my petition. The link is:

Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz

Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.

Thank you everyone for your support.

Tim Seay

Save the McDougall 5th October 2026

27/09/2026

Save the McDougall Campaign

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Hello everyone,

Our petition has increased to 1424 with mainly local Christchurch signatories. It continues to creep up slowly each week. Thank you to those that have signed.

A couple of interesting things happened this week. Last weekend the exhibition ‘Timeless – Treasures from the Historical collection’ which is themed around time and place opened in the Christchurch Art Gallery in the downstairs Sutton Gallery. It includes a representation of major works from Britain, Europe and New Zealand as diverse as Petrus van der Velden’s the Dutch Funeral to Henry La Thangue’s ‘Ligurian Lace’ and Evelyn Page’s ‘Summer Morn’. For every work in the exhibition there are 4 or 5 other ‘treasures’ that need to be resurrected from the picture store.

At the moment the only space dedicated to the city’s historical collection of 600 oil paintings and 300 watercolours is the Sutton Gallery and around 30 works displayed upstairs. Rather than making a token gesture of showing the best of the collection, there should be a concerted effort to make the main ‘treasures’ of the historical collection permanently on display as was intended when the new gallery was opened in 2003. One of the commitments that was made when a case was put to both the City Council and the public for the building of a new art gallery was that the public would be able to see more of the best of the city’s collection.

On most of the past 20 years there has been less of the historical collection on display than was seen at the Robert McDougall Art Gallery. This is a breach of the understanding reached with the donors to the gallery as well as with past donors of the paintings who donated their works to the city’s collection on the understanding they would be displayed to the public. At least half of the display space of the gallery should be devoted to the city’s historical collection.

Interestingly, the new display in the Sutton Gallery included two paintings which have virtually never been seen before despite being bought with ratepayers’ funds.

An Italian Landscape watercolour Copley Fielding (1787-1855) purchased 1970
It was last displayed once in the 1980’s.

Nightfall on the Sabine Hills, Rome 1921 Frederick Vincent Ellis (1892-1961) oil on board purchased 1989. It was last seen in the 1990’s.

It is appalling how little some of our art collection has been displayed to the public. One day this problem can be solved when the McDougall Art Gallery finally reopens with its display capacity of around 300 historical works.

In the Press, on Tuesday 22nd, Mike Yardley in his weekly column was critical of the Canterbury Museum Board in respect to the financial information it has disclosed concerning the funding for the rest of its project. It is still uncertain where all of the remaining funding will come from and whether costs have increased further due the Iran War. The Museum Board is hoping the political parties might offer further funding before the November election by when the Council will finally have to bring to a head the whole question of the financing of both the Museum and Cathedral projects.

In the meantime, our interest is in the completion of the McDougall. The Council is paying for its strengthening and base isolation with an estimated cost of $24.5m. There has been no mention of how the costs are going. Perhaps this will be disclosed when the next report is released after the election.

In the meantime, before the McDougall reopens it is important the city’s art lovers, who were gifted this beautiful building, make their views well known as to how they want the Museum and Council to run it by signing the petition.

If you wish to see the McDougall Art Gallery when it reopens used only for the historical art owned by the city as a whole it is imperative you sign my petition. The link is:

Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz

Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.

Thank you everyone for your support.

Tim Seay

Save the McDougall Campaign 27 September 2026

20/09/2026

Save the McDougall Campaign

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens

Hello everyone,

Our petition has moved up to 1422. Progress each week is slow but steady. Please keep it going.

The news this week was the headline in the Press on Tuesday that there were new concerns for the museum project. Journalist Tina Law reported that a leaked confidential letter from the Museum Board to the Council expressed their concern that they could not access the funding required for its project’s stage five services fit out until it had secured all the funding needed for the entire project. They had hoped to carry out the services fit out before the building was completed and failure to do so would result in a 12 month delay to the project and additional costs of $7.2m. The Board also expressed concern around the Council’s earlier $28.6m loan towards the construction costs to be paid back with interest over 25 years. The Board advised the Council it had been planning on using that money to go towards the increased operating costs of the new larger museum.

There was no mention of any increased costs having been incurred due to the continuing and now worsening Iran War which you would think are inevitable as we already know it has caused the costs of some building materials to soar in price. The Museum and Council are hoping that one of the two main political parties might offer to contribute further funding before the election in November and until this is known presumably the Council nor the Museum will announce any further details about funding for the project. But there is no doubt the Council is likely to be left with a huge problem in financing the Cathedral reconstruction and the Museum project.

As mentioned before one advantage of Canterbury Museum’s redevelopment project is that it is giving it the opportunity of working on its own extensive art collection to prepare some of it for display in both the McDougall and in its own expanded new buildings. The old Museum always had an art gallery of their own in which from my experience they never used for their own art. I am not sure whether they will have such a gallery in their new buildings but there should be plenty of spaces available to display art works. It is not known yet how many paintings they will eventually be able to provide of a public art gallery standard but they will eventually become an important addition to the 600 oil paintings and 300 watercolours already in the city’s historical art collection currently stored at the Christchurch Art Gallery. So far, I know they have selected out their first ten best works for display in the McDougall and here are another two of these works:

On the Look Out 1883 Thomas Selby Cousins oil on canvas

Cobb Coach in Otira Valley 1897 John Gibb oil on canvas

In the meantime, I understand the Christchurch Art Gallery has opened a new historical art display in their downstairs Sutton Gallery presumably showing some of the city’s best works. Apart from around 30 historical works, mainly landscapes, that have been shown for a long time in an upstairs gallery, the rest of the gallery is devoted to contemporary art. Continuing to run the gallery with such an unbalanced display as between contemporary and historical art is completely unacceptable as the end result is that it is actually denying the public the opportunity to see the collection of art that belongs to them. In most cases it has been given to them and in some cases, it has been purchased with their own ratepayer money. It also dishonours the terms of the donors’ gifts which included an understanding that their works would be displayed to the public. Otherwise, why else would they have given their paintings to the city?

This is the reason why it is important before the McDougall reopens that the city’s art lovers, who were gifted this beautiful building, make their views well known to the Council and Museum staff by signing the petition.

The petition is available now for the Council and Museum to see and will be formally presented to them well before the gallery reopens.

If you wish to see the McDougall Art Gallery when it reopens used only for the historical art owned by the city as a whole it is imperative you sign my petition. The link is:

Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz

Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.

Thank you everyone for your support.

Tim Seay

Save the McDougall Campaign 20 September 2026

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