Tired old lady gets a facelift

A carved ship's figurehead on display in the Edmiston Gallery. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Gone is the wine-stained carpet, the bland walls. The National Maritime Museum's once fusty Edmiston Gallery has had a makeover. Didn't see it beforehand? You're not alone. Although the gallery has no trouble attracting international tourists, the New Zealand public has shown less enthusiasm in recent years, partly because the Viaduct establishment had become a relic itself.

So it's a pleasant surprise to wander into the revamped gallery space, with its spacious layout, sliding walls, modern concrete floor and muted colour scheme, the occasional wall adorned with poignant phrases from Allen Curnow's poems. Its new visage brings the art - "a visual history of New Zealand's seafaring spirit" - back to life. On Thursday night the gallery held a launch to reveal its facelift, and it reopened to the public yesterday.

"It's been a dramatic transformation," says the museum's chief executive Paul Evans. "It used to be a box with white walls and carpet which I'd liken to my grandmother's lounge."

The gallery makeover coincides with a broader project to redevelop the museum, which has been renamed Voyager. The logo has been redesigned and the building painted black, giving it a distinctive presence on Auckland's waterfront.

The museum's centrepiece is the bold Sir Peter Blake tribute, Blue Water Black Magic, the bright interactive space that now houses KZL32.

The adjacent Edmiston Gallery had to be slightly reduced to accommodate the big boat so it too got a facelift, although the $120,000 redevelopment was funded by sponsors (the Edmiston Trust and Chartwell Trust among them), rather than the Government and ARC contribution that fed the $9.5 million development of the rest of the museum. (The museum receives less than 5 per cent of the government funding available to the Auckland Museum so it has to charge an entry fee.)

Despite the small budget, the Edmiston finally looks and feels like a traditional art gallery. Most of the works were already part of the museum's collection; others belonged to the Edmiston Trust. Additional works were borrowed from Auckland Art Gallery and Auckland Museum to strengthen the narrative. Curator Karolina Spaseska-Markovska wanted the artworks to tell a story as visitors wander through time. The new layout has given the gallery a modern feel that suits the contemporary works, and the sliding walls can reshape the space to accommodate future exhibitions.

"It's been such an exciting project to work on," says Spaseska-Markovska, a Macedonian archaeologist who escaped the Balkan war and moved to New Zealand in the mid-90s. She originally started working in the museum as a volunteer. "New Zealand may be young but it has a dramatic maritime history."