Packing of museum collection almost complete

It’s a big job: but, it is fair to say, an undeniably interesting one. The packing of the Southland Museum and Art Gallery’s extensive collection – to ready it for a shift to a new, purpose-built museum collection storage facility at Tisbury – is nearing the finish line.

Invercargill City Council Manager Southland Regional Collections Wayne Marriott said progress on packing the collection was meeting the timetable, with just under 2000 items in the History Gallery left to go.

“The collection really is a tapestry of items that give us a glimpse of Southland’s story,” he said.

The new storage facility at Tisbury is part of Project 1225, which will see the city become home to a brand-new, cutting-edge museum as well as a new specialist tuatara enclosure at Queens Park. The Tisbury storage facility is set to be completed in December.

“Being able to move into a brand-new facility, designed to specifically hold a regional collection, is a rare opportunity,” Marriott said. “Long term, we are looking forward to increasing public access to the Southland collection both onsite at Tisbury, as well as through the regional museum in Invercargill, and other cultural facilities throughout Southland.”

The painstaking task of packing items within the Southland Museum and Art Gallery’s collection began back in 2018, Marriott said.

The collection is estimated to be around 4.5 million objects. This includes an extensive collection of photographic negatives, and archaeological material. The Taoka Māori, social history, and Sub-Antarctic collections were also particularly rich, he said.

“It’s certainly been an interesting process. Some of the more intriguing items we’ve packed have been parts from the former Invercargill Gasworks, which started in 1874, and the silver Resolution and Adventure medal – commissioned by Sir Joseph Banks for Captain James Cook's second voyage to New Zealand,” Marriott said.

“It’s not the sort of stuff most people get to encounter each day at work. We do feel quite privileged to have been tasked with looking after such precious items.”

The museum collection will be transferred to the new storage facility at Tisbury from early December, to ready the existing museum site for demolition in April 2024.

Physical construction on Invercargill’s new museum will begin soon after, with the new facility scheduled to open to the public in late 2026.