The Pataka Museum in Porirua recently had a fascinating exhibition by a Torres Island artist, and has (I hope) a permanent exhibition/history of the local Ngati Toa. It has authentic artifacts such as Te Rauparaha's spear, excellent photographs and full, scholarly explanatory panels. Last year it had a representative and fairly comprehensive collection of Colin McCahon's paintings.
The Dowse fails by comparison. Lower Hutt is the site of the first planned British settlement in the world!! Britannia was a brave experiment, years before its time, which (just) succeeded, albeit not with the spectacular success its speculator founder E.G. Wakefield had promised. The little Centennial Museum on Petone's foreshore purports to show local history but its coverage is superficial and very thin.
For example, it has a display of "the sort of goods exchanged for the Hutt Valley" in 1839, but the display in the cabinet is a primary school level collection of cardboard models which is neither comprehensive nor intriguing. The actual goods included 120 muskets(ok), 60 red night caps (!) and one gross jews harps(!!) and 43 types of other items.
Porirua is obviously proud of its Te Rauparaha, although he was a war-mongering, sadistic cannibal by our standards, but Lower Hutt barely mentions Te Puni, a far-sighted leader who kept to his word in welcoming the colonists, indeed keeping them alive in the early months.
Instead the Dowse seems to have interminable collections of second-rate folk art of mediocre craftsmanship (craftpersonship?), an excellent store house with little explanation of how it is constructed, which has sat gathering dust for many years, and a Colin McCahon which is worth over $1 million but is never displayed.
Please, please can we have a local gallery/museum to be proud of. If this means changing the people in charge so be it.