Post by Dave Homewood on Jul 28, 2022 19:13:23 GMT 12
This is from the Press newspaper dated 5 January 1972, and the letter to the editor was written by our own Denys Jones. 
Canterbury Museum
Sir, —The director of the Canterbury Museum has recently expressed the view that between the wars the museum was a place that held little interest for the public. Now we are told that the museum is of greater interest to the same public. It is regrettable that this transition has been made at the expense of some very rare and valuable exhibits. The World War I Albatross was destroyed, or so I am told, because of lack of space, which also caused the museum to decline the offer of the Me109E brought to New Zealand—in spite of a surfeit of head-room in the Hall of Colonial Settlement where they could easily have been preserved and displayed without too much bother. As the museum is a public institution and the public are happy I trust that these sacrifices are justified.—Yours, etc., DENYS JONES.
December 23, 1971.
[The director of the Canterbury Museum (Dr Roger Duff) replies:
“I welcome the opportunity of placing on record that the loss of the World War I Albatross aircraft was not due to any action of the museum authorities. During a critical phase of the Second World War the plane was requisitioned by the R.N.Z.A.F. to support a recruiting drive, towed around Cathedral Square, briefly sighted at Motukarara, therafter neither returned nor accounted for, but presumably a victim of practice bombing. I am not aware that any firm offer of an Me109E was ever made to the museum, and disagree with Denys Jones that such an exhibit hovering over the Cobb Coach and the goldfields bank would have assisted our interpretation of New Zealand’s colonial history. I thank Denys Jones for praising the layout of the museum between the two world wars and invite his support in the major fundraising effort from April 10 to provide urgently-needed extensions which will enable us to show many treasures of human art languishing at present for want of a display home.”
Canterbury Museum
Sir, —The director of the Canterbury Museum has recently expressed the view that between the wars the museum was a place that held little interest for the public. Now we are told that the museum is of greater interest to the same public. It is regrettable that this transition has been made at the expense of some very rare and valuable exhibits. The World War I Albatross was destroyed, or so I am told, because of lack of space, which also caused the museum to decline the offer of the Me109E brought to New Zealand—in spite of a surfeit of head-room in the Hall of Colonial Settlement where they could easily have been preserved and displayed without too much bother. As the museum is a public institution and the public are happy I trust that these sacrifices are justified.—Yours, etc., DENYS JONES.
December 23, 1971.
[The director of the Canterbury Museum (Dr Roger Duff) replies:
“I welcome the opportunity of placing on record that the loss of the World War I Albatross aircraft was not due to any action of the museum authorities. During a critical phase of the Second World War the plane was requisitioned by the R.N.Z.A.F. to support a recruiting drive, towed around Cathedral Square, briefly sighted at Motukarara, therafter neither returned nor accounted for, but presumably a victim of practice bombing. I am not aware that any firm offer of an Me109E was ever made to the museum, and disagree with Denys Jones that such an exhibit hovering over the Cobb Coach and the goldfields bank would have assisted our interpretation of New Zealand’s colonial history. I thank Denys Jones for praising the layout of the museum between the two world wars and invite his support in the major fundraising effort from April 10 to provide urgently-needed extensions which will enable us to show many treasures of human art languishing at present for want of a display home.”
