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Cotman bows to 'stunning ignorance' - TUESDAY JULY 6, 2010

Far North Regional Museum curator manager Des Cotman recovering at home after knee surgery - he won't be going back to work.

Far North Regional Museum curator manager Des Cotman has fought tooth and nail to preserve the museum trust's independence and the museum's integrity as it becomes part of Kaitaia's Te Ahu concept, but now he's conceded defeat.
Mr Cotman, at home last week recovering from knee surgery, said he no longer had answers to the "stunning ignorance" that had consistently been displayed by the Far North District Council and the Te Ahu Trust in its planning for the museum's future.
He would not return to work when he recovered his mobility, but in any event a document that had been circulated within the council and trust had disestablished his position.
Mr Cotman's resignation from the museum was the third. First to go was Barbara Wyley, who he said had given more than 20 years' extraordinarily valuable service, followed by trust secretary Gaye Simms, who called it quits in the course of a museum trust meeting, who he described as the glue that had held everything together.
Mr Cotman said he had had no option but to resign. also. He had already let down those who had thought he would carry the day, and to stay in his position would be tantamount to condoning what was about to happen.
The Te Ahu Trust and the council, he said, had been smart enough not to try dismantling the museum trust, but were well down the path to emasculating it. The museum trust would in future be reduced to seeking out volunteers to care for the collection, and fundraising.
"The reality of what we do at the museum is simply not there," he said.
"It's been shoved out the back door. This will be a sham museum.
"No one has ever asked what's needed or what we do at the museum. Some [council and trust representatives] have spent as long as 20 minutes looking at the collection, but that's not the museum.
"Richard Murray's proposal incorporated a functioning museum, but now he's been pushed out the back door, or perhaps that should be the side door."

GALLING
From the outset, Mr Cotman said, he had accepted former Mayor Yvonne Sharp's concept of setting up an independent trust to shepherd through the building of new, combined premises. He had even quietly "stumped up" the symbolic $10 note with which the late Millie Srhoj had commissioned the trust that became Te Ahu.
Within months, however, he became disquieted about the museum's relationship with the new trust. It appeared to be taking decisions on the museum's behalf, and consistently failed to provide any document of understanding with the museum trust.
"It hired consultants to pronounce over the museum, without seeking genuine involvement on the museum's part, and it was galling for a body as fiscally prudent as the museum [whose staff had long accepted low wages in the greater cause] to watch the inept spending on consultants running free and wide without adequate briefing.
"There seemed to be a belief within Te Ahu that if they were paying these people so much then, by God, their opinions must be dead right. In fact these consultants were using the same tricks to milk similar projects in other parts of the country, but some other institutions were wise enough to see through them and eventually take counsel from their own wisdom."
Mr Cotman, who interpreted the disestablishment of his position as retaliation for his criticism in the past, had two other major concerns, the first of which was that the `seven iwi' concept, namely the five Te Hiku tribes plus `Ngati Pakeha' and `Ngati Tarara' (Dalmatian), would see just one-seventh of the museum's space given over to European heritage, a prospect he saw as a "faintly ridiculous" form of social engineering
"History and culture don't work like this," he said.
And that, in turn would inevitably lead to the "rationalisation" of the collection, the "polite word" for dispensing with objects that did not fit with the new ideology.
That led to the question as to who owned the collection. The council and Te Ahu believed they did; Mr Cotman believed it belonged to the community, a concept that he had no doubt the council and Te Ahu Trust would soon come to understand.
"It [the collection] has been assembled through the generosity of locals who put their taonga and treasure into what they imagined was the inviolate safety of the museum trust so we could all experience and enjoy it," he said.
"Larger museums can get away with disposing of donated items; we should not even dare contemplate this. We are too close and known to each other.
"We would all feel such betrayal."