Opinion: Museum a true icon of our city

PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER

The words 'iconic' and 'icon' get thrown around a lot these days, sometimes a little loosely.

According to my Concise Oxford English Dictionary an icon is 'a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol or as worthy of veneration'.

I think most people would agree the Rotorua Museum fits that bill.

It's that one image that is immediately recognised, around New Zealand and even around the world, as belonging to Rotorua. Having travelled a good chunk of the world, I have never seen another building that looks just like it. It's beautiful, historic and it's ours.

Its beauty is more than skin deep though. Its greatest treasures lay within, well they did until recently.

Our museum is cracking. How much of that was to do with the Kaikoura quake we may never know, but a jolt 500km away seems to have been the last straw for this old building.

The council had no other option but to close the museum, despite 20 staff now facing Christmas with redundancies hanging over their heads.

Museum director Stewart Brown was visibly upset as he made the announcement and faced questions from the country's media yesterday. That sense of worry and loss will be shared not only by the staff and museum volunteers, the mayor and councillors but also members of the wider community and visitors to our city.

Destination Rotorua chief executive Michelle Templer was adamant the closure won't have a major impact on visitor numbers to the city. Whether she is right or not, only time will tell.

Images of the Bath House building would continue to be used to promote the city, she said. And I guess that makes sense. The museum is the face of Rotorua and that - no matter how long its doors are closed - will surely never change.