Palmerston North City Council expresses support for David Warnock Medical Museum’s hunt for new premises

Palmerston North city councillor Mark Arnott, who has been helping pack up the museum, with curator Micki Tyler (centre) and secretary Marilyn Linklater. Photo / Judith Lacy

If you find moving house daunting, spare a thought for the volunteers at the David Warnock Medical Museum.

Te Whatu Ora has asked the museum to find a new home because Palmerston North Hospital needs the site for a substation to support the mental health block being built.

Among the specialist packaging and to-do lists, museum board member Susan Abasa is pleased with Palmerston North City Council’s decision last week.

Elected members directed the chief executive to provide the museum with support to apply for other external sources of funding.

The council deserves credit for passing the recommendation unanimously, Abasa says. “It was such a wise and very much appreciated happenstance, very carefully thought through and very strategic.”

Knowing the museum volunteers can call on the expertise of council staff when applying for grants will be immensely helpful, she says.

The funding priorities are money for storage and for temporary premises to continue the work and visibility of the museum, plus having contact with the community.

This will allow time for the “collective brain” to work out how central North Island residents want the museum to develop.

Two of the treasures in the care of the David Warnock Medical Museum are an iron lung and an incubator. Photo / Judith Lacy

Palmerston North Hospital has supported the museum since its establishment in 1980 by providing premises.

The museum has been in the soon-to-be-vacated building since 2007 and the hospital pays for power, security and IT services. It has also provided storage and orderlies to take display cabinets to and from the hospital for outreach displays.

The museum celebrates the level of support it has had from the hospital for the past 43 years, Abasa says.

The museum cares for fragile and historically important objects that tell much about the history of New Zealand and the people who gave or collected the objects.

The museum’s last day open to the public was May 19 and it needs to be out this month. The volunteers hope to lend parts of the collection to other organisations and for events such as nurses’ reunions.

In moving the recommendation on May 31, councillor Mark Arnott said the museum’s collection includes rare and unique items that date from the 17th century. Among the oldest treasures is an Antonie van Leeuwenhoek microscope from 1672 and a specialist medical library of books, the earliest from 1792.

Mayor Grant Smith said Te Manawa does not have space for the museum collection but has helped where it can with cataloguing, and will help with temporary displays.

“There are some real treasures there that are actually world class and I would hope that we will find somewhere for them in the bigger scheme of things in time to come.”

It looks like a jail but used to be the pharmacy at Palmerston North Hospital. This exhibit belongs to the David Warnock Medical Museum. Photo / Supplied

Palmerston North company Le Courier is moving the museum’s contents to storage for free and has supplied pallets and packing materials.

David Warnock was a Palmerston North eye surgeon who died in 2012.

When former ear, nose and throat surgeon Neil Little died in 1979, Warnock was asked to care for Little’s collection of medical memorabilia.