Museum to sell musical heirlooms

By BERNARD ORSMAN

The Auckland Museum is planning to sell part of a world-renowned collection of musical instruments amassed over 60 years by a Wellington chemist, Ron Castle, and his sister Zillah.

The museum bought the collection in 1998 - one of its largest acquisitions - to save it from going to an overseas buyer following the death of Mr Castle in the late 1980s and his sister in 1997, aged 86.

The Castles' niece, Maureen Castle, inherited the collection and sold it to the museum for an undisclosed price. In 1998, experts valued the collection of 475 musical instruments at about $500,000.

Key instruments from the Castle Collection have been photographed and sent to the auction house of Sotheby's in London for valuation.

Once the valuations have been received, a list of instruments to be sold will be submitted to the Auckland Museum Trust Board.

This will be the first time that Auckland Museum or Te Papa, the country's leading museums, have sold anything from their collections.

Auckland Museum has disposed of a Maori mere and Te Papa a set of Maori carved wooden panels and a Micronesian weather charm. The items were given back to the owners.

Auckland museum board chairman Bruce Anderson said the aim was to rationalise the Castle Collection and other items in the musical instruments collection, which was rated outstanding in a review last year of the museum's collections.

The review, which set out what collections needed strengthening and what could be trimmed, also suggested disposing of inferior items of furniture, photographs and social history.

Museum director Dr Rodney Wilson defended the decision to sell part of the Castle Collection, which he said would be done under the strict guidelines of a "deaccessioning and disposal policy" adopted in 1999.

Past museum practice of not disposing of anything and hanging onto unworthy material, fakes and badly deteriorated items only encouraged lazy connoisseurship and curatorship, Dr Wilson said.

He described the Castle Collection as "patchy," with most of the instruments in the good-to-fine category, and some "souvenir-type" instruments like those bought by tourists.

The Castles started buying musical instruments in the 1930s to perform baroque music. Some instruments date back to 1690, including an 18th-century Kirkman harpsichord and rare violins. The most recent instruments are ones Zillah Castle brought back from China in the 1980s.

Maureen Castle, who told the Weekend Herald last month that she believed the collection would be staying at the Auckland Museum, this week said she did not know anything about the planned sale.

"It belongs to them ...

"I don't want to be bothered with it any more."