Shaky grounds

If you want to study the progress of a muddle in which two reasonable ideas get mashed into one stupid one, you need go no further than yesterday's NZ Herald editorial. The theme is grabbing some Te Papa action for Auckland with the NZH quickly finding the silver lining in Wellington’s recent earthquakes. Calling them “the catalyst for the advancement of the concept of Te Papa North” and unashamedly reaching for a cliché award by pulling out the “eggs-in-one-basket” argument, the big idea is to hot-foot a chunk of the National collection North.

Hamish Keith’s original Te Papa North concept was to have some of the great works from the National collection on show in Auckland as part of a series of curated exhibitions in a stand alone destination building. It was certainly not to help out Te Papa's everyday challenges in securing the storage of items many of which are not of great interest or necessarily in a condition to be presented to the public.

As to Auckland taking advantage of storage problems highlighted by a couple of earthquakes - be careful what you wish for.
 
Image: Te Papa storage via colourmefiji