1932: Robert McDougall Art Gallery
June 13, 2019
By AHNZ
Seventeen years have gone by since the Robert McDougall Art Gallery was cast out. After 70 years of service, The State pulled the plug on her.
The Robert McDougall Art Gallery closed its doors on 16th June 2002 – the 70th anniversary of its opening.- Disco
Built on Biscuits
McDougall himself was a Christchurch Prince during an era where New Zealand’s locus of power and wealth was centred upon that city. Part of a generation raised and educated by the Founders (ie Cook’s Private School and Christ’s College) Robert grew up to be a powerhouse industrialist. Early on he managed the Mill Island flour mill on the Avon and later became a director of the fantastically lucrative Kaiapoi Woollen Mills. However, the big cheese McDougall secured that took him out of the rat race was becoming owner of Aulsebrooks bakery.
The Aulsebrooks’ business was founded in Christchurch the same year little 3-yo Robert first arrived himself, 1863. McDougall purchased the New Zealand interests 1889 and kept the name. The Aulsebrooks moved to Australia and established themselves there. For his life and for a good time after, McDougall’s legacy carried on but by today they have all but gone.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my Iced Animal Biscuits, ye Mighty, and despair!”- Percy Shelley, adjusted
The Kaiapoi Woollen Mills tanked in the 1970s. The Art Gallery was exiled from the culture in 2002. As for Aulsebrooks, “Under McDougall’s tenure it remained one of New Zealand’s top foodstuffs brands..As far as I recall Aulsebrook’s remained on the market in some semblance until the late 1990s when it was phased out for good.”¹ Both the Australia and New Zealand Aulsebrook’s were eaten up by Arnott’s. So there’s not much left of the New Zealand Ozymandias now. All turns to dust, the only thing that lasts is family.
Aulsebrook’s Iced Animals wrap. c1987. At this stage, the biscuits were no longer embossed.They stopped embossing them when production moved from Christchurch to Auckland..²
Those Animal Biscuits were wonderful, I remember them. Don’t know if you can even buy them now but like other things they became a bland culinary caricature of their former Aulsebrook selves.
Replaced by Distaste
Has Christchurch lost her aesthetic soul? Post-Modern art is utter garbage anyway. We’re still waiting for a new cycle of Demolition (eg Punk) to clear the way for something beautiful. I would like to think that Christchurch patrons refused to collaborate with the art movement on those terms. Just sitting it out until (or unless) we find our spirit again.
Unfortunately that’s not the reason that the Robert McDougall is on pause. It was simply replaced by that big ugly glass Art Gallery down Montreal Street that slowly sprang up. Next minute it became a post-earthquake HQ for the city. So Christchurch hasn’t sat out the post-modernistic art crash after all. It’s simply that a certain political faction wanted the project of constructing an expensive new building and to be in control of the city’s art.
—
image ref. Aulsebrook and Sons, moved to Australia; Invoice dated 1905; History Always Repeats: Remembering New Zealand archive, Facebook
1 ibid
image ref. Animal biscuits; Bycroft Boy, Pintrest
2 ibid
image ref. McDougall gallery’s lack of use a ‘bloody disgrace’; Stuff
Ref. THE ROBERT MCDOUGALL ART GALLERY OPENED – 16TH JUNE 1932; Disco
ref. Robert Ewing McDougall, 1860-1942; Christchurch City Libraries
image ref. Quasi Sculpture by Ronnie van Hout; Christchurch Daily Photo
Note: “I can’t go along with the idea that the natural place for an art gallery is in the park. An arcadian setting may have been fine for galleries built for a different set of social conditions 60 years ago when gallery going was the preserve of a leisured class, but not in today’s vastly changing world.”- Robert McDougall Art Gallery manager John Coley; Parks unit gives thumbs down to gallery in park, Christchurch Star (15/2/1994)
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