Council won't promise on suffrage tiles

The art gallery wants to open up the Khartoum Place area after its upgrade. Photo / Dean Purcell

The National Council of Women has failed in its bid to get an assurance that a memorial commemorating 100 years since women could vote will stay in the CBD's Khartoum Place.

Councillors on the Auckland City Council's arts, culture and recreation Committee voted 6 to 2 against committing to keep the tiled mural, celebrating the success of New Zealand's early suffragettes, in its location off Lorne St.

National Council of Women social issues secretary Margaret Wilson said it was "premature and presumptuous" to even think about moving the memorial, after its fate was supposedly settled in 2006, when several prominent dames helped to save it.

There has been tension over the memorial's future since members of the Auckland art fraternity recommended moving it, although they did not say where it should go.

The council's advisory panel for public art, including chairwoman Trish Clark and Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines, want it re-sited to open up the view of the $113 million Auckland Art Gallery upgrade in Kitchener St.

Ms Wilson said there seemed to be a "continual obsession" with getting rid of the tiles, despite the fact that they were put there in 1993 with the council's blessing.

Central city resident Tim Coffey accused the "arts mafia" of wanting to remake the area into a uniform design.

He said the "beautiful" mural injected some colour into an otherwise ho-hum area.

Dr Frances Townsend told the committee the people who used the sheltered square did not want it opened up.

She said the women's council "would do anything - although I don't know that we would chain ourselves anywhere - to keep it where it is", to which supporters from the floor yelled that some women might chain themselves up to save the mural tiles.

Committee chairman Greg Moyle said there were no immediate plans to shift the memorial.

He said the central business district board, which wanted to look at the options for moving it, would need to work with the women's council before deciding what to do.

He said he understood the CBD board was not happy to spend the $1 million allocated to revamp that part of Khartoum Place until the memorial issue was resolved.