New art museum is back on track
Construction has started on a new $15 million art museum in central Christchurch, which will take two or three years longer and cost $2m more than first planned.
When the Ravenscar House project was announced in 2015, construction was expected to start in 2016 and the budget was $13m. Completion has been delayed from 2018 to 2020 or 2021, and the budget has increased due to design complications.
The project will transform a car parking site and public toilets on Rolleston Ave into a museum housing a significant collection of New Zealand art. The collection features 110 paintings from the 19th century to the present day, including five paintings by Colin McCahon and 10 by Frances Hodgkins.
The art collection was started by Christchurch couple Jim and Susan Wakefield in the early 1990s. Insurance funds from their former home, which was destroyed in the Canterbury earthquakes, are being used to fund the new museum.
The couple placed ownership of the art collection into the Ravenscar Trust, with a plan to gift it to the city in the future. The museum will be jointly operated by the trust and Canterbury Museum. The Wakefields have since stood down from the trust for health reasons.
The $5 million plot of land for the project was gifted to Canterbury Museum by the Christchurch City Council in 2015.
Trust chairman Steve Wakefield said construction started this week with sheet piling on the perimeter of the site in preparation for excavation of an underground car park. Base isolation for the building will be incorporated into the basement.
He said the project, which was granted building consent in December, would take about 20 months to complete and, after a fitout, the museum would open in 2020 or 2021.
‘‘The earthworks are under way and we are keen to get that advanced and completed in the summer time. It is better to dig the hole when it is not raining as much.’’
He said his parents, Jim and Susan Wakefield, were still following the project, despite ill health. ‘‘It is exciting for them to see their vision materialising.’’