New Museum
The old Morrin Museum’ buildings did not provide adequate conditions to
store, work with, display or protect our town’s heritage collection.
An exciting new, purpose-built facility has be built on Canada St. opposite the Morrinsville Library. The settler’s cottage “McDonald Cottage” has be attached to the museum so that it will become part of the displays, accessed internally through the museum. The new museum will provide us with a modern facility that will provide comfortable display, storage and working conditions.
With continued community support and help we will be on the way to achieving our goal of $1,200,000. It is our aim that this new museum will provide the people of Morrinsville with a sense of place and that visitors to our town will come to our museum and leave with a feeling for the spirit of our district and its people.
The focus of the new museum will be on 3 central Morrinsville stories:
1. Soldier Settlements of Kereone and Mangateparu
2. Maori Parliament
3. Drainage of swamplands to rich and successful Dairy Farmland and its natural features
Complimenting these main displays will be a programme of changing exhibitions which will explore the many and varied other stories that have made Morrinsville what it is today. We will be looking for your imput into what you would like to see at your museum, so get your creative thinking caps on!
The museum will be a central meeting place where people can learn about Morrinsville and its place in the history of New Zealand. We will have an Education Room, where we will hold public talks, workshops and concerts; a library of books on central topics relating to the wider Morrinsville area as well as the main exhibition area. McDonald Cottage, our authentic 1873 colonial cottage will be attached to the new museum building, creating an adjoined exhibition space focusing on early New Zealand domestic life. It will be furnished in the style of around 1900
I am so thrilled to see that the new museum is about to become a reality. A wonderful achievement for a hard working team of volunteers with a vision and the commitment to make it happen.
The new website is looking great.
Bette
Yay!!! Lets go baby. Build build build!!!
Strongly suggest you make your “Shop” offerings more commercial. You need to raise money! So, take on a line of T-shirts sporting “Morrin Museum” and a small line of coffee mugs. Get your imprint out there. At least people like me will buy some stuff! (Just a thought from a Yank who happened upon your web site)
Thank Jim for your interest and ideas. At the moment we have all the helpers shifting artifacts and Archives into temporary premises until it is built and fitted out. I will see if we can find a local manufacture to produce something we can sell as suggested.
As you can guess we are short on the money side of things.
Again Thanks for your interest and I hope you follow our progress on our web site.
Regards
Mike Gribble
Manager
Morrin Museum
It must be exciting to have a new museum opening in the town and it’s great to see that it will be focussing on the Soldier Settlers of Mangateparu. As a distant relative of one of the families, I look forward to learning more about the settlement.
Being in the UK it’s not easy to call in although I did visit the old museum 3-4 years ago. Are there plans to put any more information on line?
Good luck with the project
Kim