07/06/2026
Save the McDougall Campaign
The Robert McDougall Art Gallery in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens
Hello everyone,
The petition has been slow the last few days. It now stands at 1315 but I am very grateful for the last comments made concerning your wish to see the McDougall when opened showing the city’s historical art as intended by the donor.
In the budget the Government failed to provide any further funding from taxpayers for either the Museum project or for the Cathedral leaving the Council now as the only future public source of additional funding. Since the budget there has been complete silence from the Council itself and also the Press concerning both projects. I would imagine there has been a lot of soul searching going on.
The situation now for both projects is serious as they now simply have no future guaranteed committed source of funding to bring them to a conclusion. As a result, the Museum Board will have to be very careful how they proceed. They have said in the past that if they run out of funding they will have to mothball the project until they can raise further funds in the future. While the Council should be able to provide some further funds they won’t be able to do it all on their own. The Museum will shortly have to make some kind of statement of how they now intend to proceed. As I have said what really concerns me is the possibility of further cost increases due simply to the length of time the project still has to run - 3 years – and due also to the increased cost of building materials caused by the Iran War which is still dragging on.
It never ceases to amaze me how many beautiful paintings exist in the city’s collection – 600 oil paintings and 300 watercolours worth about $30m virtually all held in store at the Christchurch Art Gallery and no longer displayed to the public - a situation which has arisen simply because that is the wishes of the staff employed to run it rather than those of the people who visit it and who happen as ratepayers to pay their salaries! And the McDougall Art Gallery has sat for years waiting to be incorporated into the Museum Redevelopment Project only to be leased for 50 years to the Museum for their use when they don’t have an art collection to display in it that has ever been selected on the basis of its artistic merit. What a mess!
One such painting in the city’s historical collection is a beautiful portrait painting by a Scottish artist that was given to the McDougall by my grandfather when it opened in 1932:
The End of the Chapter 1872 oil on canvas George Paul Chalmers (1833-1878) donated by Robert McDougall 1932
The McDougall Art Gallery has been leased to Canterbury Museum for fifty years for their use but they do not have an art collection of a public art gallery standard to display in it so they intend to use it for some of the art they have and also for some of their huge decorative arts and crafts collections.
If you wish to see the paintings from the city’s historical collection again on display in the McDougall Art Gallery when it reopens it is imperative you sign my petition. The link is:
Save the McDougall as our Museum of Historical Art - Petitions.nz
Please send this posting on to all your Facebook friends and ask them to forward it onto their friends. In that way we can hopefully build the numbers up.
Thank you everyone for your support.
Tim Seay
Save the McDougall Campaign 7 June 2026