Councillors to consider museum admission options
Invercargill City Councillors are set to consider entry fee options for Te Unua Museum of Southland, as a clearer picture of a project completion timeline for the new regional museum emerges.
Two key reports – detailing the proposed admissions fee structure, and project completion timeline – on the development of Te Unua Museum of Southland will be heard at Invercargill City Council’s Community and Regulatory Committee on Tuesday, 8 September. The first would ask elected members to make a decision on the proposed admissions, access, and revenue approach at the regional museum, while the second report provided a clearer picture on its completion timeline.
Physical construction of the building was set to be completed by the end of this month, with the regional museum expected to open next year.
Invercargill City Council Group Manager Community Spaces and Places Rex Capil said the project team had identified a target date of 1 October 2027 for the project’s completion, which included the physical construction and commissioning of the new facility, as well as installation and setup of museum exhibitions, visitor experiences, opening event planning and preparing staff, systems and processes for operation.
An official opening date would be confirmed closer to the project’s completion, he said.
“When you are building a significant regional facility like Te Unua from scratch, there is a huge number of different workstreams to balance as you go: from completing the internal fit-out of large-scale exhibitions, to fine-tuning operational details such as getting our café ready to go,” he said.
Council now had greater certainty around the order of exhibition installation. Key roles within the museum team had now also been filled, and confirmation of operational details was also well under way.
While the wider project included as many concurrent workstreams as possible, some activities were dependant on other pieces of work being completed first – including exhibition installation, Capil said.
The contract with experience development contractor, Gibson International, for the long-term exhibition at Te Unua was scheduled to be completed by June 2027, while the four temporary exhibitions at the regional museum’s opening would be completed by the in-house museum experience team.
“The final installation of the exhibitions has to be staggered, because each of the galleries they’ll go into are interconnected and rely on shared access routes, loading areas, and staging spaces. Our staff also have to carefully sequence their work to make sure exhibitions, and the objects and taoka within them, are delivered safely and effectively,” he said.
“We know walking through the doors of the new museum is something everybody is looking forward to, and we hope our community is as excited as we are as we get closer to opening day.”
Also set to be considered by elected members at next week’s committee meeting iswhether to make entry free for all visitors.
A number of admission fee scenarios, with different approaches to local, domestic, and international visitors, had been considered, Capil said.
The recommendation to elected members was to take an ‘Active Giving’ approach.
This option would see free general admission supported by the active encouragement of voluntary visitor contributions, with alternative revenue opportunities to be developed for special exhibitions, programmes, events, tours, retail and café offering, and other premium visitor experiences, Capil said.
However, sector benchmarking, case studies, and professional expertise consistently suggested admissions charging was likely to reduce both visitation and participation, he said.
Deciding an admissions structure involved more than revenue generation, but also had to balance public access – including access to taoka and cultural material of significance, participation, financial sustainability, and a museum’s broader purpose as a community asset, he said.
Data from both the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, and the relatively few comparable regional museums around the country, showed there was no single approach that maximised all of the community outcomes simultaneously.
Other options to be considered in elected members’ decision-making next week’s meeting included targeted admissions charging for international visitors or targeted admissions charging for both international and domestic visitors who lived outside of Southland.
The Committee would then make its recommendation regarding the museum’s admissions structure to Council for a final decision on Tuesday 22 September. This would then be used to determine budgets for consultation in Council’s upcoming Long-term Plan 2027-2037, which will go out for public consultation in early 2027.
Click here to view the reports and to watch the livestream.
