The Dowse Art Museum

The Dowse Art Museum is Lower Hutt's municipal art gallery, at 45 Laings Road in the Lower Hutt CBD. It opened in 1971 and was completely remodelled in 2013. The museum takes its name from Mayor Percy Dowse, who led Hutt City from 1950 to 1970, and his wife Mary Dowse, who — with Elizabeth Harper of the Hutt Art Society — lobbied the City Council to establish a gallery. The Council agreed to provide space in 1963, initially in an extension of the War Memorial Library; after Mary Dowse died in a road accident in 1964, the Council resolved unanimously to build a dedicated gallery in her honour. Neither Percy nor Mary Dowse lived to see the museum open.

Programme and building

The Dowse presents more than 20 exhibitions a year across eleven gallery spaces, alongside community events and education programmes. Admission to the galleries is free. The building has won a number of design and architecture awards.

Event spaces

The venue-hire offering is built around multipurpose spaces arranged about an enclosed outdoor courtyard, which gives events a sheltered outdoor element that is genuinely useful in Wellington conditions. Spaces can be configured for:

• A workshop or team session for around 20
• A formal lecture or presentation for around 80
• A dining or reception layout for around 120

Suitability for meetings and events

The Dowse suits corporate workshops, seminars, board and staff meetings, product launches, conference receptions and dinners at the smaller end of the scale, as well as community events and weddings. Its strength for MICE buyers is the gallery context — delegates can move between function space and exhibitions — combined with a central Lower Hutt location that is straightforward to reach from Wellington city and the wider Hutt Valley. It is a boutique-scale venue rather than a conference centre; larger plenary requirements will need a different site.

See more Wellington region venues.