V. ‘FITTED UP WITH CONSIDERABLE TASTE’
For its first 15 years the Auckland Institute had acted as a quasi-educational facility. Until Auckland University College was established in 1883, the institute was alone in providing opportunities for scientific enlightenment through its monthly meetings, which were always well attended. Its public lectures, which often utilised aspects of the museum’s collection, were instructive, fulfilling one of the institute’s constitutional requirements to promote science, literature and art. They also helped stimulate discussion among the local citizens, particularly in areas relevant to a developing city, and on topics such as nature conservation, education, public health and technology. Now it was stepping up to become a key city attraction.
The grand opening of the Auckland Institute and Museum building was held on Monday, 5 June 1876, with Governor George Phipps, 2nd Marquess of Normanby officiating. The opening was accompanied by ‘A Grand Industrial, Artistic and Scientific Exhibition’ that would continue until Wednesday 14 June. If the planned inclusion of an ‘artistic’ component in an institution dominated by natural history and ethnographic collections seems unusual, it was because at that stage Auckland had no civic art gallery. Members of what became the Auckland Society of Arts (formed in 1869 as the Auckland Society of Artists) were happy to respond to a request for the temporary loan of exhibits: they offered a ‘black and white’ display, and also a display of works by ‘foreign and colonial artists’.
Auckland also lacked a zoo. Cheeseman regarded the inclusion of taxidermied exotic animals from the museum’s collection as a unique attraction and a big drawcard. In the new building, the animals were to be arranged in attractive and well organised exhibits that would later evolve into natural history habitats and dioramas as part of the museum exhibits.
The museum was essentially a one-man operation, so in addition to all the usual daily demands of his role, Cheeseman was very busy with preparations for the grand opening. It was a case of all hands to the pump, including family — his brother, William, for example, helped him clean and arrange the exhibits.
On 19 May 1876 workmen were busy arranging the display cases and experimenting with gas lighting from 82 burners. The Auckland Star described the building as ‘a credit to all concerned’ and one ‘fitted up with considerable taste’, and it predicted that, when completed, it would rank with the city’s best public buildings and would be ‘second to no other kindred institution in the colony’.
Two days before the formal opening, installation of the natural history displays was well underway, and the library was now ready, well lit, well ventilated and ‘otherwise suited to the studious reader’. And thanks to members of the Society of Artists, a large number of pictures were about to be hung. Overall, a ‘wonderful change’ had come over the interior of the museum, which the Auckland Star attributed to the efforts of Cheeseman and his ‘corps of assistants, paid and voluntary’. A previous ‘scene of confusion’ had ‘metamorphosed into the most beautiful exhibition of works of art which has ever been presented to the public of Auckland’, and the newspaper confidently anticipated that everything would be ready for the opening ceremony.
There are no known photographs of the opening exhibition, nor was there a printed catalogue, but contemporary newspapers recorded some of the objects on display. The collections were shown ‘to great advantage’, thanks to the diffused light throughout the whole building from the roof lantern. And in a sign of increasing professionalism, each natural history specimen was accompanied by a label bearing its ‘scientific appellation’, along with its name in Māori and in English.
The natural history displays included nine cases of birds — seven devoted to birds native to New Zealand, and others that contained specimens from Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, Europe and Africa. There were also two cases relating to that ‘gigantic bird’, the moa, this country’s ‘veritable oldest inhabitant’, with its bones and footprints immortalised in rock. Minerals were well represented with some 500 specimens, as was kauri gum, including one lump that weighed 70 pounds.
Perhaps following Kew’s example, there was also a display of ‘economic botany’ that consisted of seeds and specimens, presumably of native timbers; if details such as flowers and leaves were lacking, it was probably because there was not yet any practical means of preservation or of producing convincing replicas.
A display of wool would have been of interest to farmers, and local zoology was represented by a case of fish, centipedes, glowworms and other forms ‘as curious as they are ugly’. Somewhat in juxtaposition to these was a case of taonga Māori, including one that had been the subject of much discussion some seven years earlier — the greenstone mere alleged to have belonged to Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, the first Māori King.
Nothing if not diverse, the displays included ‘some very ancient and curious . . . old china’, model yachts and other vessels, and early bronzes; in the latter category were an Etruscan lamp, Irish spearheads, an Egyptian dagger, ancient amber rosary beads, a Saxon medallion and a Roman toga fastener. There was also a silk-printing loom, exhibited by Auckland ormé silk manufacturer Walter Greenshields, who was reportedly working ‘very assiduously’ at his machine. The piece of work, emblazoned ‘Auckland Institute and Museum, June 5, 1876’, is possibly the first piece of silk cloth to be made in New Zealand.
According to the Daily Southern Cross, a large proportion of the exhibits, many from the islands of the Pacific, could be classified as ‘curios’. They included ‘South Sea native weapons’ which displayed ‘great ingenuity in the art of killing’; wooden ‘pillows’ (kali or headrests) from Fiji, which were ‘anything but sleep wooers’; and a display of whāriki and other woven mats that had been hung over the railings of the upper gallery.
The considerable number, diversity and juxtaposed nature of the exhibits evoked the cabinets of curiosities of the past, suggesting that the ‘new museum idea’ of displaying only a select few items had not yet been adopted in Auckland. No doubt this was largely due to the number and nature of the items loaned for the opening exhibition, and which Cheeseman presumably felt obliged to show, largely in the interest of public relations. On display were whale’s teeth, a cap made of spider web, large wooden bowls, shells, ‘a very pretty porcupine quill cabinet’, two ‘splendid walrus tusks’ — presumably examples of scrimshaw and engraved with female figures identified as ‘Queen Esther’, ‘Lucretia’, ‘Harriett’, ‘Fanny’ and ‘Josephine’ — Māori pipes and fishhooks, pounamu ornaments and what an Auckland newspaper described as a ‘tastily finished’ flax kete made by a 96-year-old Māori woman.
A century and a half on, few of these items are likely to have survived or be identifiable. A notable exception is the waka huia or ‘carved Maori box’ loaned by artist, photographer and teacher John Kinder, along with a suit of armour, presumably from Kiribati and made of sennit. The waka huia, distinguished by a pair of tauihu (canoe prow) figures that both support it and protect its contents, was carved around 1870 by tohunga whakairo Patoromu Tamatea; Kinder photographed it at around the same time. In September 2010, when it appeared in a sale at an Auckland auction house, it was purchased by the Auckland War Memorial Museum, 134 years after it had been included in the opening exhibition at Princes Street.
Among other exhibits described by local papers was ‘a very curious’ potae tauā (a cap worn by women during a period of mourning) woven from rimurimu (seaweed) and ‘a portion of the “loot” at Pekin’ — presumably items ‘acquired’ during the 1850 Taiping Rebellion in China, when Beijing was attacked. Another intriguing inclusion was a model of ‘Stovin’s patent treble-action grinder and amalgamator’, a device designed to crush quartz for the extraction of gold.
In the opinion of the Auckland Star, by far the most interesting objects on display were the historical books and manuscripts made available by George Grey. The Star anticipated that these items of ‘extraordinary antiquity and rareness’ and assumed to be of ‘enormous value’ would attract ‘the lion’s share of public attention’. Among the two dozen or so titles identified in the press were a first edition of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), a translation of Virgil printed by William Caxton (1490) and a first edition of Aesop’s Fables (1480).
A more local inclusion was an 1857 manuscript of the Gospel of St Luke in the Aboriginal Australian language of Awabakal. Reputed to be the only record of the language extant, it was the work of missionary Lancelot Threlkeld and an Aboriginal Australian named Biraban. Grey also contributed what was hailed at the time as ‘the finest collection of Maori curiosities that has ever been collected’, of a mere pounamu and other items, and a ‘wonderful Maori idol’ now known to have been a taumata atua — a tapu stone figure representing Rongo that was placed in a kūmara garden. According to one account, it was brought to Aotearoa in the Arawa canoe and had been presented to Grey during his visit to Rotorua in 1866; it is now in the collection of the Auckland Museum.
The press also singled out Thomas Gillies, past (1869 and 1873) and current president of the institute, whose ‘magnificent case of shells’ was considered ‘chief’ among the scientific exhibits. Gillies had also loaned a fine collection of Roman and Oriental antique coins.
Upstairs in the gallery was the black and white exhibition and a collection of oil and watercolour paintings loaned by the Society of Artists. The black and white exhibition consisted of 114 works, encompassing sepia drawings, pen-and-ink sketches and in fact ‘everything into which color . . . does not enter’. The efforts of other members of the Cheeseman family were on display here: the exhibitors included Thomas Cheeseman’s sisters Emma and Ellen, who submitted drawings in Indian ink from famous paintings, one of which, The Assumption of the Virgin, was described as ‘admirable’.
Auckland architect Edward Bartley contributed ‘good sepia work’, and Albin Martin presented a number of drawings in various stages of development. Philip Herapath had a ‘fine’ drawing’ of the Auckland Provincial Hospital, then under construction, but for some reason his other notable commission, the Princes Street Museum, was not included. More pictures were apparently added over time, among them two by one or both of the Cheeseman sisters — Crossing the Ford and The Poultry Dealer — both hailed as ‘beautiful specimens of neat and tasteful execution’.
Although ‘well-known’ artists were included in the exhibition, few would be considered household names today. Perhaps the best known was Albin Martin, who was also represented by two unfinished oil paintings closely associated with Auckland businessman, farmer and politician Josiah Firth, who had been president of the institute in 1875. The pictures, which received considerable mention because of both the subject matter and ‘the general evidence they afford of high artistic culture’, were The Death of William Thompson, the King-maker (now in the collection of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki) and The Meeting of J. C. Firth with Te Kooti (at the Alexander Turnbull Library).
The latter work, when finished, promised to be of interest for its ‘historic facts and scenic beauty’. Both paintings show Martin’s adherence to a late eighteenth-century European landscape tradition rather than contributing to any sense of a distinctive local style. And they reveal the few degrees of separation between politics, commerce and science in this post-New Zealand Wars period: Firth, who leased land near Matamata from Wiremu Tāmihana Tarapīpipi (Ngāti Hauā, also known as William Thompson, 1805–1866) and had a friendship with him, had also been a hawkish advocate of using military force to loosen the grip of Waikato iwi and the King Movement, in which Tāmihana was a prime mover, on land coveted by settlers. After the confiscations, Firth acquired a huge landholding in the Matamata area.
Local handcrafts were also well represented: examples included a needlework screen, cushions, a vase of flowers composed of hair, and a ‘beautifully-inlaid’ handkerchief box by Bohemian-born cabinetmaker Anton Seuffert.
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The opening of the new building was an opportunity to reflect on the history of the now 24-year-old museum. The Daily Southern Cross noted that the Auckland Institute and the Auckland Museum, which had been ‘totally distinct’, were now ‘indissolubly united’, and in their ‘fine new building’ would live ‘side by side’ and ‘mutually assist one another’. It also noted that the first recorded contribution to the museum was five glass cases of taxidermied native birds, gifted on 3 July 1852 by a Mr W. Griffiths. Other donors mentioned included the museum’s founding secretary, John Smith, and the delightfully named surveyor Frederick Septimus Peppercorne, who contributed minerals. The article pointed out that as the institute prepared for the grand opening, there was much cause for optimism: seven years earlier it had about 130 members; that number had now grown to at least 230.
The New Zealand Herald anticipated that the opening would mark the progress made in ‘the development of thought and culture in this part of the colony’, and that it represented ‘a field of promise for the future advancement of scientific inquiry’. The article mentioned Gillies and Grey, in particular — Gillies for his early involvement in the ‘promotion of scientific enquiry’, and Grey because of his reputation for ‘practical good sense and accurate observation’.
Earlier on the day of the grand opening, a deputation of rangatira had visited the museum and examined the displays. They reportedly expressed great admiration for the different weapons, especially the mere pounamu, and the whāriki and other mats displayed in the upper gallery.
The official opening ceremony took place on the evening of 5 June, attended by upwards of 2000 people. The official party proceeded to a dais erected at the eastern end of the hall, to the accompaniment of the national anthem played on a harmonium. Gillies spoke first, giving a short history of the Auckland Institute. The audience cheered when he expressed the hope that the museum and library of the institute might one day develop into free public facilities ‘equal to anything of the sort in the Southern Seas’. In the meantime, he pointed out that the building had cost £4000, of which nearly £2000 was from private subscriptions, while members of the council were held personally responsible for the remaining £2000. He was confident, however, that the central government would come to their aid, and would assist an institution ‘worthy not only of the province of Auckland but of the colony itself’.
Grey, for his part, expressed his pleasure on entering a museum ‘built by private enterprise’. He acknowledged those who had made it possible, and exhorted the community to now pledge itself to the best of its ability, whether by contributing funds and specimens, or by delivering lectures, to assist them in this ‘noble task’. Finally, Governor Phipps spoke: he recognised the growth in the Australasian colonies of libraries, museums and literary and scientific organisations as encouraging evidence of ‘enlightened progress’, and said he was happy to report that the example of such ‘valuable’ institutions, already established in Dunedin, Christchurch and Wellington, was now being followed in Auckland.
As part of the celebrations, Henry Severn delivered a series of lectures on subjects such as the sun, the rotation of the earth and the solar system, as well as one on ‘The telescope: its construction, forms and use’. To demonstrate the various types of telescopes, he had a ‘good’ seven-inch instrument constructed by the very versatile Cheeseman, and he described the way in which Cheeseman had silvered its mirror.
Both Cheeseman and his father were keen amateur astronomers, and had built an observatory with a large reflecting telescope at their Remuera property to observe the night sky. It was a popular destination for members of the Auckland Astronomical Society, and in 1882 a group of enthusiasts, including an American delegation of astronomers, had witnessed the transit of Venus from there. Cheeseman’s telescope was included at the museum opening in a display of microscopes, reflectors and other scientific instruments that enabled what the New Zealand Herald described as the ‘fullest examination of natural objects’.
Another feature of the opening programme was a sequence of ‘dissolving views’ presented by Mount Albert resident Thomas Crook. These gradually transitioning images, projected onto a large screen by an oxyhydrogen lamp, were considered the finest of their kind yet seen in Auckland. The screen was placed at the eastern end of the building, and the projected pictures, which exhibited ‘the minuteness of detail’, concentrated on views of European cities, in particular, London, and sights such as the Royal Albert Hall and the ‘wild beasts’ in the London zoo. As the Herald explained, the photographs of the animals had been taken by the ‘instantaneous process’, and had captured the animals with ‘extraordinary precision’.
Public attendance at the newly opened museum was increasing, largely thanks to the popularity of these so-called ‘miscellaneous’ attractions. The building was ‘crowded’ on Saturday afternoon, 10 June, when Severn explained the workings of the mariner’s compass to children, and also sent up a hot-air balloon. That evening, during his lecture on the solar system, he expressed the hope that the institute council would shortly install telescopes outside the building to allow the public to make their own observations. Severn also stressed the importance of the education of the young in a colony like New Zealand, and suggested that if children were attracted to the museum then in a few years its membership would be in the thousands.
A second screening of projected images a few days later included photographs of sculptures and portraits of ‘great personages’, among them British royalty. There was ‘a very emphatic demonstration of loyalty’ when Queen Victoria’s image appeared on the screen, and that of the Duke of Edinburgh, who had visited New Zealand in 1869 and 1870, was greeted with a ‘hearty cheer’.
On 12 June Cheeseman, as secretary, notified the public via newspaper advertisements that the exhibition at the museum would continue, as planned, until 14 June, and that doors would be open from 12 noon to 5.30pm, and from 7 to 10pm. Admission was one shilling, and free at the early session for children accompanied by adults. Two days later Cheeseman advised that ‘in compliance with the wishes of numerous friends’ they had decided to extend the exhibition until Saturday 17 June.
Members of the institute, including past, present and future presidents, contributed to the public events. Theophilus Heale gave a lecture on the solar system, and four days later, Josiah Martin gave an illustrated evening lecture on the electric telegraph. He informed his audience that in England, for an annual fee of £20, a person could have a wire installed that connected their private house and their place of business, thereby saving much writing and travelling. At the end of his lecture Martin promoted membership of the institute: another 300–400 subscribers, he suggested, would ‘relieve it from its debt’. The evening concluded with Crook’s popular dissolving views, projected by the oxyhydrogen lamp.
Support also came from the Daily Southern Cross, which pointed out that the institute now had a substantial library, containing around 1000 volumes of historical and scientific reference. These, it suggested, would form the nucleus of a great free library and ‘an educational engine of mighty power’. It encouraged citizens to spend ‘an hour or two’ among the monthly publications received by the institute, but warned readers that ‘Gleaning is easy. The difficulty is the abundance of material.’
James Pond — a member of the institute for 68 years who went on to become president in 1885, and who later left an endowment to commemorate the work of his friend Thomas Cheeseman — exhibited the spectroscope and the spectrum of a number of different metals when subjected to the flame of a bunsen burner. Cheeseman himself, meanwhile, was busy demonstrating and explaining ‘different instruments’ — presumably including telescopes — to visitors. On 14 June the New Zealand Herald reported that the opening exhibition had been well attended and its success was ‘eminently deserved’.
On 15 June it was discovered that a ‘beautiful stamp album’ had been stolen from the exhibition. Schoolboys were last seen looking at the item, and the Auckland Star suggested that schoolmasters might ‘make some enquiries among their pupils’; the album was ‘restored’ two days later. There was also a humorous incident involving an item allegedly associated with Captain Cook. When the museum was established in 1852, the institute had sought ‘any memento’ relating to Cook, and a knife subsequently appeared in the opening exhibition in 1876. One unimpressed visitor complained to a local paper that this knife of ‘our famed navigator’ had been relegated to an ‘out-of-the-way’ corner of the museum, and was accompanied by ‘a small pencilled inscription’.
In the correspondent’s view, ‘Captain Cook’s knife’, admittedly ‘considerably dilapidated’, was of greater historical interest than any other object in the museum. But it was all a hoax: investigations revealed that the object in question was a ‘terribly battered Sheffield knife’ dug up during drainlaying operations in the street. A group of Grammar School boys had picked it up and had managed to insert it, along with a ‘label’, into a display case in a conveniently quiet corner of the museum.
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As a result of inclement weather, the council decided to extend the exhibition once more, until Tuesday 20 June, when it would ‘positively close’. And on the last day there was ‘a Special Entertainment . . . for Children’, presented by Thomas Crook and his oxyhydrogen light, consisting of images of Robinson Crusoe, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and others, and concluding with a number of comic scenes.
The evening of 20 June marked the conclusion of the ‘grand opening’ of the museum building. During its run, around 8000 visitors had paid the entry fee, and the building had been ‘a fashionable resort for amusement seekers’ enjoying the various attractions. When former magistrate and provincial government politician Robert Barstow, shortly to become president of the institute, spoke at the closing ceremony he made special mention of George Grey’s loan of his ‘magnificent and beautiful collection’ of rare old manuscripts, books and Māori artefacts.
Barstow suggested that were many of those items to be offered at auction, they would fetch ‘more than their weight in gold’. But he also reiterated his earlier comment about the ‘imperfect’ nature of Grey’s Māori collection: there were no examples of kō (wooden digging sticks), fishing nets or a waka, or indeed any of those ‘quaint old things’, which were so plentiful in the early days of colonisation, and which were not collected at the time.
Barstow thanked all those who had contributed to the success of the opening exhibition. Looking to the future, he noted that the institute was encumbered with a heavy debt and would be happy to receive donations towards its reduction. He also suggested that citizens who possessed valuable and rare articles might share them with others by placing them in the museum.
Crook then once again showed his dissolving views, concluding with the portrait of Queen Victoria while the audience sang the national anthem. Shortly afterwards, the crowd dispersed and the opening exhibition was ‘successfully over’. The Daily Southern Cross claimed that 5 June 1876 should be ‘a memorable epoch in Auckland for all who feel an interest in the education of the people’.
That year’s Annual Report of the Auckland Institute and Museum noted that despite the short time spent preparing for the opening exhibition, it had been ‘a great success’. In fact, it had ‘far surpassed anything of the kind previously attempted in Auckland’.
