Otago Museum’s biggest exhibition of 2020 is opening a week early, on Saturday 26 September.
The reason for the unusual early opening is the impact of COVID-19. “Usually we would have a team from Gondwana Studios
in Australia fly over and lead the installation so we would know exact dates.” said Shanaya Allan, Otago Museum’s
Exhibition and Creative Services Officer who is managing the project. “This time, with boarder closures, things are a
little different and we had to plan for the worst case scenario.”
Garry Gibson, the Museum’s Production and Projects Officer spent last week in Waikato helping to take down the
exhibition in order to guide the exhibitions team in Otago. “It is a bit tricky!”, he said. “there are huge
animatronics, but the really tough thing was putting the skeletons together”
It was all hands on deck trying to get the exhibit ready so that the Museum could open it to the public as soon as
possible. “COVID-19 has really impacted the whole planning for this”, said Shanaya, “We weren’t sure if we would be able
to get it shipped down, or when it would arrive. We are stoked we got it here in good time, so that we could start
working on getting it up”
The Gondwana Studios team in Australia helped the Museum team via email, and were onhand for Zoom calls to help with any
issues.
“The really great thing is that we had a team of people who work on putting skeletons together all the time” said Kate
Oktay, Otago Museum’s Marketing Manager. “Our Collections staff were really busy helping out with all the articulation
this week, without them it would have been much more difficult. We are just thrilled to be able to open early for the
school holidays; children are just going to love this!”
The exhibition will be open from 10am this Saturday. Single Entry tickets are $10 and Unlimited Entry, for four months
worth of dinosaur fun, are $25.