Museum build imminent
Work on a new privately-funded $15 million art museum in central Christchurch will start in October.
Ravenscar House will be built on an existing car park on Rolleston Ave and will display an extensive collection of art, sculpture, modernist furniture and classical antiquities collected by Christchurch couple Jim and Susan Wakefield.
The artworks have a Canterbury emphasis and include pieces by Colin McCahon, Rita Angus, Frances Hodgkins, Charles Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer.
The project was announced in 2015 and was originally expected to be completed this year, but design changes have since pushed the completion date to 2020.
Ravenscar Trust chairman Steve Wakefield said the trust had been focused on getting the project right, rather than pushing to meet an arbitrary deadline.
The final design of the 520-square-metre single-story building was released yesterday.
The contemporary building will feature four rooms modelled on the Wakefields’ former home, the original Ravenscar House in Scarborough, which was demolished following the 2011 earthquakes.
Insurance funds from their home have been used for the project.
The rooms will be linked by a glazed terrace and the building will feature a central courtyard, water feature and landscaped garden, where a number of the couple’s sculptures will be displayed. An underground car park features 25 parks and another 25 built above ground.
Earthquake rubble will be used to make the precast concrete panels for the house. Granite from the Scarborough property, red brick from another house owned by the Wakefields and volcanic stone from the Arts Centre will be used in the panels, which are being custom manufactured by a company in Ashburton.
A resource consent for the project was granted in December and a building consent application will be lodged in July, along with the tender.
Steve Wakefield said it was exciting to get to this stage of the project, after a lot of hard work by the people involved.
Due to ill health, Sue and Jim Wakefield handed over delivery of the project to their children.
‘‘We’re all committed to delivering Jim and Susan’s vision for the house,’’ Steve Wakefield said.
The trust was fully funding the building and the $5m plot of land was gifted to Canterbury Museum by the Christchurch City Council in 2015.
Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright said Ravenscar House would become a significant visitor attraction for locals and tourists.
Once the building is completed, the trust will gift the house to Canterbury Museum but retain ownership of the artwork.
The house museum is expected to create nine new jobs and be self-financing through ticket sales and car parking revenue. Police have interviewed convicted double murderer Russell John Tully over the murder of Ashburton teen Kirsty Bentley.
Detective Inspector Greg Murton confirmed yesterday that Tully, who shot dead two Work and Income workers in Ashburton in 2014, had recently been interviewed by police in relation to Kirsty’s death.
Kirsty was 15 when she disappeared on December 31, 1998, while walking her family’s dog along the Ashburton River.
The dog and her underwear were found in the area the next day, but Kirsty’s body was not found for another two weeks, about 40 kilometres away in Rakaia Gorge.
Murton said the interview happened after inquiries revealed Tully lived across the road from the Bentley family in the early 1990s.
From 2013, Tully also visited and camped in the area near where Kirsty lived and where her dog was found tied up. ‘‘He was interviewed because he had not been identified or spoken to during the original inquiry, as he was not living in the area in 1998-99, but was married and living and working in Nelson at the time.
‘‘Mr Tully has provided a detailed account of his whereabouts, employment and travel around the time of the murder, and police are satisfied that there is no evidence at this time that Mr Tully was in any way involved in the abduction and murder of Kirsty Bentley.’’
Murton told The Press in an earlier interview: ‘‘In the original inquiry there were hundreds of people on the persons of interest list, some have been removed but some may not have and remain there.’’