Don't mess with an historic name

OPINION: Every museum has the odd skeleton in its cupboards. They go with the territory.

But Auckland War Memorial Museum has new versions rattling around and it's having trouble coping with them. So is the public.

There've been sly tactics over admission charges, a major gutting of specialist staff which saw something like 46 experts lose their jobs, the apparent protest resignation of the deputy director over new policies, and the current behind-closed-doors scrapping with its controversial director Vanda Vitali.

That process now involves a QC apiece for her and the trust board.

The board chairman Dr William Randall has been quoted on a performance review with Dr Vitali "involving a fair amount of rigorous debate over matters of concern to the board ... it's the frequency of them that gets to us."

And getting to the general public as well.

He's also been quoted that the board hopes it will not get to an untenable position with Dr Vitali.

The public – the institution's shareholders – could well wonder if that situation hasn't already been reached.

The extent of the internal politics since the Vitali arrival is very plain in an earlier annual report in a throw-away but significant line: "Foremost, we wish to acknowledge the Taumata-a-Iwi, our Maori advisory committee, for their support during this time of change.

"They have been a source of steadiness and calm when matters around us were turbulent."

"Turbulent" – that's a good word for it.

Add in the dispute with the Hillary family over Ed's bequest which needed an intervention by John Key to resolve, and the initial rejection of the Bomber Command Memorial.

Then there's the longer-running, consistent failure to honour its heritage – that much-respected "war memorial" role in its title now seldom used, more correctly, deliberately abandoned. In the museum's title, its emblem and its letterhead it has somehow become simply Auckland Museum.

Except for what seems like token use on Anzac Day and the like when it cannot be ignored.

I know the behind-the-hand commercial argument – that the war reference could limit drawing power to tourists, notably Japanese.

That's not a good enough get-out to justify the furtive renaming of an institution which has an honourable and historic persona as one of New Zealand's major official war memorials. Imagine if some odd-ball group in Japan began renaming the nation's Yasukune war shrine because of a logical process linking it with the barbarism of the Pacific War.

Or if some absurd case was mounted for the US to ditch the revered title of its historic Arlington Cemetery because the site was once the home of rebel leader Robert E Lee.

Museum bosses at whatever level do stealth very well. The "we-don't-charge-they-donate" controversy is typical. Regardless of how it was justified or manipulated, museum-goers were asked to pay to get in – despite a compulsory museum levy which already adds around $25 million to rates in the region.

In recent months, there were interesting results when the sleight of an outstretched hand for donations was put on hold. As long as you could produce a rate demand or a variety of IDs which showed you were a genuine Auckland regional local, then you were covered by what was called an "I am free" status.

The result: The doors opened to 40,000 – nearly twice the number who came in the same six weeks last year – so successful that the free entry (at a place that says it never charges) is running on for months more.

Congratulating themselves on a commercial coup, museum staff seem to leave themselves open to questions, rather like the classic query about glasses being half full or half empty.

Do those figures show how popular that building on the hill really is? Or do they actually show how unpopular and counter-productive the original pay/donate policy has been, and suggest strongly that thousands of would-be visitors have been turned off by the hands out for a "donation"? Perhaps the war memorial museum board should look at a number of those rattling skeleton bones all at the one time:

Is the new broom Vitali approach really the best strategy? Is she the right person for the job?

Is "pay now please" the best system since people seem to stay away because of it?

Don't the board, director and staff have a statutory and moral obligation to formally and fully reinstate the museum's war memorial status?

Is this perhaps a time to re-read the mission statement from the 2007-08 annual report?

They should look again at their self-definition in that report – as "guardians of its past" as well as its future.

Restating that definition might silence some of those worrying, rattling skeletons, might rebuild public confidence in a great, historic asset and memorial – and comply with the wording and the intent of that Auckland War Memorial Act 1996, with a name confirmed in the later Auckland War Memorial Museum Empowering Act in 2003.

Then, among other MPs, Judith Collins put the case I am restating and spoke for hundreds of thousand of Aucklanders.

She said: "I love the Auckland War Memorial Museum. It is what a museum should be. It looks like a museum; it acts like a museum; it is a museum. It is also a war memorial, and that is so important today, 3 September, (the anniversary of the outbreak of world war 11).

Hansard reports her: "At no stage should we ever forget that that site is sacred. It is sacred in many ways and its full name must be used, which is why I was particularly pleased to see that included in the title of this bill."

So are we Judith.

Clearly the acts do not give anonymous war memorial museum office-holders the authority to hash around with the historic title. The government should tell them so – and right a nagging wrong.

To contact Pat Booth email offpat@snl.co.nz or write care of this newspaper. All replies are open for publication unless marked Not For Publication. Because of the large numbers of responses it is not possible to answer all correspondence.

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