Madam, – Anyone who sees the Albert Bender exhibition of Asian art on permanent display at the National Museum will appreciate the magnificence of this assembly of Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese culture and art.
A few hundred yards away stored in the same building is the huge ethnographical collection in the museum’s possession. This is all too seldom shown to the public – small selections have been seen most recently in exhibitions such as The Art of the Pacific in 1978 and Te Ao Maori: The Maori World in 1990.
Recent financial cutbacks will no doubt delay a permanent site for the display of these internationally acclaimed treasures. While we wait, perhaps a selection of the more important items, such as the Benin art or those Pacific pieces dating back to the voyages of Captain Cook might be presented to the public on some sort of rotating basis in the unused rooms of Collins Barracks? – Yours, etc,