Otago Museum: H D Skinner Annex + returning exhibition!

### ODT Online Sat, 4 Jan 2014
Museum to keep annex open all year
By John Gibb
Otago Museum is planning to keep its recently redeveloped H D Skinner Annex open to the public throughout the year, to allow increased community use. The recent ‘Heritage Lost and Found: Our Changing Cityscape‘ exhibition, displayed in the Postmaster Gallery at the annex, had been “very well received” by the community. This show, which was developed with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust, would now be reinstalled, and, in response to “public demand”, would return to public display from March. Read more

● Otago Museum H D Skinner Annex (building background and facilities)

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Comment at ODT Online:

Lost and found
Submitted by ej kerr on Sat, 04/01/2014 – 11:03am.

The significance of the recently closed exhibition for local residents and city visitors was perhaps, at the time, under-appreciated by the exhibiting parties. Dunedin City has formerly lacked such an insightful, rational and easily grasped interactive exhibition on the historical layers of the built environment – signposting the form and change to our cultural heritage landscape and urban context, for better or worse since early days.

This is a planned city (thank you, surveyor Charles Kettle) – we should always honour Dunedin’s uniqueness and intricate textures representatively and graphically; know the ‘before and afters’, the losses, additions and discoveries; be able to quickly recount how the cityscape has evolved, with just these type visual aids and new evolving IT. ‘Heritage Lost and Found’ exactly captures the spirit of where we are!

It’s great news the exhibition is set to continue – in a broader sense, the exhibition is something to build on and develop into the future as a permanent visitor display worthy of any sensitive location for public education. It can take special refreshes and add-ons as research into the merits and quirks of the architecture (our collective legacy) continues through the work of New Zealand Historic Places Trust, Dunedin City Council, Otago Museum, related city archives and collections, archaeologists, building owners, researchers, and professional architectural historians of the calibre of Peter Entwisle and David Murray. The combined effort, its coordination, contains so much power, potential and publishing opportunity. Boggles the mind, then there’s the overwhelming ‘pasture’ for design excellence to cover the brief…
[ends]

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Former Dunedin North Post Office before work started, photo by Benchill via Wikimedia Commons. (below) Proposed building redevelopment rendered by McCoy and Wixon Architects, 2012.

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Links to earlier stories copied from another thread:

● ODT 11.7.13 Museum annex set for opening [after delays]
The $1.6 million redevelopment of the former Dunedin North post office as an Otago Museum exhibition area is nearing completion, and the first display is expected to open next month. Titled ‘Heritage Lost and Found: Our Changing Cityscape’, the first exhibition to be displayed at the annexe was developed in partnership with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust. The display would showcase “important aspects of Dunedin’s built heritage that have been demolished or redeveloped”.

● ODT 7.7.13 Work near end on old Post Office
● ODT 18.5.13 Museum’s ‘old post office’ annex nearly ready

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image – opening graphic, view from Museum reserve by Whatifdunedin