Nelson Provincial Museum is hoping to fund a new water-tight storage facility. Photo: Supplied / Nelson Provincial Museum
Twenty million dollars of irreplaceable treasures are a few sandbags and plastic sheets away from ruin as Nelson Provincial Museum struggles to fund a new $14m watertight storage facility.
Now, it is resorting to Givealittle crowd-funding to help protect the taonga after cuts to government funding.
The museum said its existing storage facility was leaky and on its last legs and precious collections stored there were under threat every time it rained.
Nelson Provincial Museum chief executive Lucinda Jimson told Checkpoint that she slept "very, very badly" whenever it rained due to worrying about the museum collection.
"And so do our amazing collection team, whenever we hear that rain on the roof, or we see a forecast coming up where rain and wind are combined together, we get in there and we get out the buckets and the plastic wrap."
It was not a pretty solution with "plastics draped all over our collection rows", but it helped while the museum works out its future, she said.
Nelson Museum resorts to Give a Little to protect taonga
"We have a roof that is pretty old but it's also riddled with asbestos so it's hard to fix."
They kept an eye during rain storms with security cameras as well.
"We have an incredible collection," Jimson said, including treasures such as the Tyree photographic collection "which is largely glass plate negatives ranging from 1860 to 1940".
"It's almost unique in world terms because there are so very few surviving photographic collections that really reflect the life of a region. You see these people as babies growing up, in their old age, with children and grandchildren of their own.
"It's really significant in world terms because so many of these collections were just lost."
The museum also has one of only two existing kākāpō feather cloaks in the world - the other is in Scotland.
It is not ideal to resort to a GiveALittle, but it cannot get money from the Regional Culture and Heritage Fund, which the government shut down this year.
"We understand that there's no money around this year but we really hope that this fund will be revisited in the future."
Half of the estimated $14m funding has been committed by the Nelson City Council, Tasman District Council and grants.
For the $7m still needed it is applying for other grant funding, including the Ministry for Culture and Heritage's significant project fund.
The fix was not a cheap project but it was still very cost effective, Jimson said.
"We have worked with quantity surveyors and our architect going over and over again trying to identify where we can find money, so that is really the cheapest that we can do both to make it accessible and to really look after the collection.
"We asked our architect to design us a big fridge so that we can keep the collection safe under humidity controls. ... It's not a state-of-the-art facility but it will be fit for purpose."
The museum Givealittle campaign can be found here and hopes to raise $115,000.