Auckland Art Gallery celebrates 125 years

The opening of Auckland Art Gallery at 3.30pm on Friday 17 February 1888

It is nearly 125 years since Auckland Art Gallery opened.

No photographs were taken at the opening of Auckland Art Gallery, 3.30pm on Friday 17 February 1888. This was because interior photography, other than in purpose-built portrait studios, was not technically available in Auckland at that time. Yet, from the news coverage, we learn that many people converged at the Gallery’s entrance in Coburg Street (now Kitchener Street) to attend this occasion. The speeches were given inside the exhibition room proudly described as ‘the largest Art Gallery in the Australian Colony…105 feet in length, 32 feet in breadth… with a wall space of 5,890 square feet’. Interestingly, news coverage of the event noted that many women were present. I suppose many of the men who might have been there were at their jobs.

The speakers at the opening were Mayor Albert Devore, Governor Sir William Francis Drummond Jervois, KCMG, CB and Auckland Society of Art President Mr E A McKechnie. The governor said, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this Art Gallery is, thanks to Sir George Grey, the first permanent one in New Zealand’. He added, presciently, ‘it is most gratifying to know that there are already many able artists in this country whose work will become the foundation of a New Zealand school of painting’.

The Gallery was still being completed at the time of the Library’s opening on Tuesday 22 March 1887. Sir George Grey, twice governor of New Zealand, had been central to the Grand Opening Ceremony of Auckland’s Public Library. In his address, Grey provided an account of the need for arts and knowledge to inform the public. In early February 1888, Sir George informed the Mayor of Auckland that he was unwell and would be unable to attend the Gallery opening, yet the 28 paintings, which he had gifted, would be on show. The Herald commentator described many of the artworks in detail.

One of the features which emerge from the opening speaker’s comments that day is the notion that Auckland Art Gallery should collect both international and New Zealand art. It was suggested that living artists’ works be included. As well as this, the speakers expressed the wish that the City of Auckland, its businesses and its citizens work together to support both the growth and development of the Gallery.

Mayor Devore commented that although artworks had already been gifted and loaned, he hoped more gifting of art would occur. The governor added he believed Sir George Grey’s philanthropy and his endowment of books and art to the Library and Gallery was expressly ‘for the free use of the people’.

It has been fascinating to review which artworks the public saw on Friday 17 February 1888. They have helped determine the subsequent collection’s growth and focus.

Caspar Netscher’s Girl Arranging Flowers was one of Sir George Grey’s personal favorites; it had belonged to his mother. The 1862 William Ewart painting of his equerry Hami Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs) was the first New Zealand portrait to enter the Gallery’s collection. Governor Grey had commissioned this work. One of the first examples of New Zealand contemporary art shown at the Gallery, which had already entered the collection, was Kennett Watkins’ The Home of the Cormorants, Waitakere Ranges, 1886 – a very recent view of a swamp in west Auckland.

Recalling the opening of the Gallery demonstrates that a vision for the its future existed 125 years ago. The current reality of the Gallery was imagined on that occasion, as was the future nature of the art collection. The opening speakers probably had zero consciousness that the collection would have expanded – at the moment of its 125th anniversary to 15,402 items. All of these can be accessed via the Gallery’s website. So very many of them have been acquired by Auckland’s citizens through our city Council or via gifts, bequests and long-term loans from generous individuals and organisations.


CREDITS:
Caspar Netscher
Girl Arranging Flowers 1683
oil on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of Sir George Grey, 1883

William Ewart
Hami Hone Ropiha (John Hobbs) 1862
oil on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of Sir George Grey, 1887

Kennett Watkins
The Home of the cormorants, Waitakere Ranges 1886
gouache
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
gift of students of the artist, 1888

One year on

It’s been an entire year since we opened the doors of the newly restored and expanded Auckland Art Gallery!

Crowds enter the Gallery on opening day

I've been enjoying reading back through the archives of this blog to see the years of hard work that led up to this moment, right from the moment we closed our doors and emptied the galleries. A webcam kept the public (and staff!) up-to-date as demolition began. In 2009 we let people see into the future with an animated ‘fly-through’ of the Gallery. In early 2010 we looked back at the progress to date with a nifty timelapse video. Finally work drew to a close and on 6 June 2011 we were able to announce an opening date!

But before that could happen, we had to start moving everything back in… Being allowed to explore the newly restored building was an exciting and humbling experience. The moment when the first painting was hung in the developed galleries was momentous. Finally we took over the new office spaces and the Gallery and its Māori dimension commissions were blessed in a dawn ceremony.

And finally on 3 September 2011 we opened, with fanfare and fun and performances and street art and crowds. Hearing the feedback from visitors in those opening weeks never gets old:









In the last year we’ve:

• Held 32 exhibitions
• Seen the gallery spaces taken over by dancers, string quartets, blues bands, and hip-hop crews
• Released multiple publications
• Won 12 awards for our beautiful building
• And welcomed more than 677,000 visitors through our doors! 

Thank you to everyone who's visited us in the last year. It's exciting every day to see people experiencing the galleries and our collection, and we've got plenty of surprises in store for you, so stay tuned...

Mike Parr: Talking Back to Power

Performance artist Mike Parr has generously given us permission to reproduce his speech from the opening night of The Walters Prize 2012.

Young Yvonne

Hers sheathed in black velvet embroidered in gold thread and sequined panthered and ankled  Napoleonic by couches to turbaned tantamount no less, slender more supple even than Antoinette young Yvonne’s body lay ever more African than Arab quite purple-frogged in pink-flowered tumult. Turquoise was caftan enquired at cost as whose black velvet glossed  was/were gold embossed shoes in repeat sequins do distantly recall Bohain’s cross-legged frocks of old for then there of which the plucked from a rich blue ground formed in a plum-red blouse slashed and swagged pants sumptuously oranged before our Arnoud herself arranged front to back onto green-and-creamed Javanese batik sashed silks. She’s boredom she said her open book unread personified on their laps lay the day the long limbed and her quirky for the feature before the cash fabulously shot silk sample books stashed and seemed several shy over sensitive and sensuously damasked bladed upholstered next to their skin. In Henri’s hotel rooms demonstrably magnolia marvellous but threadbare posing arabesque meandering profusion though far from happy Yvonne’s undoubtedly light airs whereas Lissette longs herself on lounges for frivolous yet’s twisted listless in toile de Jouy job lots and stands at open windows flush with fresh onto ocean frilly as actress less Italian than French as angular as Antoinette.
- Wystan Curnow

Very difficult to read. The piece includes three internal full stops, one forward slash a few hyphened words and one isolated comma. That bemused me. And very difficult to type out, because of the line lengths. Even re-setting my margin widths didn’t really do it, so I had to opt for 10point.

I first read this poem in the LRB in December 2011.  To make matters worse, it was preceded by an article entitled, “Are You Part Neanderthal” and immediately followed by another called, “Making Money”, while the poem itself was embedded in a piece called, “Doing it Ourselves: David Patrikarakos writes about Iran’s Nuclear Programme”.

Hard to read and hard to see. So the risk of mangling the work is part of the work. Reminds me of the difficulty of one of my early performance scripts. “Eat what you read. Record the sonic content of the work”.

And then there’s Spurling in paraphrase, because Hilary Spurling’s magisterial biography of Matisse immediately comes to mind. “vase of anemones or carnations, couple of lemons, frilled muslin dressing-table, green umbrella, mauve stockings, dark bows, chunky high heels, vertical strips of beach & sea beyond, Italian straw hat, single white ostrich plume curling + frothing over the brim, blue-black ribbon looped, pink parasol, old-fashioned, high-necked, long-sleeved white frock, turquoise-blue flower pots, blue balustrade. Fur, feathers, fluff, fabric, flowers…you’ll recognize the cadences.

The tremendous horizontality of Curnow’s poem is its essential content and the means to recapitulate something of Matisse’s psychology. The delirium of his sensuous identification and the prohibition on touching. His eye-full. “The splendid face-value of his painting”, as John Golding put it. But also a kind of emptiness. Glossy dilation.

I think it was his friend Signac or was it Henri-Edmond Cross who described Matisse as “anxious, madly anxious”.

The difficulties, like the stimulating difficulties of the works in this year’s Walters, are structural, performative, conceptual…

Young Yvonne is actually Yvonne Landsberg and the encounter between her and Matisse was a one-off closely patrolled by her brother and mother. The resultant painting completed just before the outbreak of WW1 is one of Matisse’s strangest & most haunting works. Monochromatic, blind eyes, the figure & pose of the young woman is repeated by echoing curves and arabesques of gouged paint, but in a disorientating way Curnow’s work conceals this preferring to imagine her as an odalisque.

Spurling refers to her “hopelessly unfashionable looks”, while Pierre Matisse explains, “that it was felt that her defects would be absorbed by the deformations of a modern painter” as though her defects were also the painter’s defects.

And Spurling again talking about the painting… “slight, grave, pale figure within a vortex of whorls and claw marks conveying a poignant sense of human vulnerability and endurance”.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In Autumn of 1940 Picasso was living in occupied Paris. One day he was visited in his studio by a group of German officers. He handed out photographs of Guernica and one of them asked, “Did you do this?” and Picasso replied, “No you did”.

Talking back to power is what Guernica is about and double-talk is the essential structure of the picture’s address, because Picasso’s sketchbooks of the 1930’s reveal that its iconography of raping bulls, desolated women, violent dismemberment are essentially domestic, what Gustav Jung characterized as Picasso’s schizoid absence of effect…

Punctum, punchline, performance…

From my point of view, from the point of view of performance as art, the photograph of Guernica is enough, or Picasso’s anecdote is enough. Enough Guernica.

Braque’s remark after the Cubist solidarity says it all. “Picasso use to be a great painter, now he’s merely a genius”, but from our point of view now, Picasso’s balloon like expansion, his painting in public, his irresponsible pastiche, is actually a contemporary stance and in this respect Picasso’s shadow is dragged ahead of him, to announce the end of Modernism and the beginnings of a kind of institutionality, in which the artist is half court jester and half idiot savant; a kind of poised virulence without definite form…

I wonder what Adorno really meant when he said, “That poetry after Auschwitz is impossible”. Did he mean that the ecstasy of transcendence was impossible after Auschwitz, because transcendence was set at the wrong end of time, or did he mean to say that Auschwitz had severed signifier and signified once and for all. That after Auschwitz we are all, ineluctably, deprived of language that truly matters. That language, and with it, our secure sense of our own humanity, have been irrevocably estranged. That after Auschwitz poetry could only be a special kind of gobbledegook.

Gobbledegook then is our new material. The fierce realism of forms that fail.

Mike Parr 3. 8. 2012

Sunday Studio: The Inside Story (‘What did you do in art today, honey?’)

Welcome to our first blog from the Studio at the Auckland Art Gallery! We are excited to have the platform to celebrate the ideas and techniques that the children are interpreting through discussion and making in our studio courses. Not only does it give us a chance to showcase the fantastic ideas that the children are expressing visually, but we hope to also provide interested parents with a bit more of an idea about what we’re up to (in case your children are less than forthcoming with any of the details of their time in the studio!).

We will show you the works that we have been looking at in the Gallery from the Collection, as well as the art ideas and techniques we are exploring in the studio. We will share other sites, articles and blogs that we think are interesting, and offer other ideas and questions that you can use to further your child’s interest in art.

Our next blog will be posted soon with images from our first session of the 6-8 year olds’ studio course cARTography. Here’s a sneaky peek at Amanda’s map of her journey from home to the Auckland Art Gallery.

In the meantime, remember to come in this Saturday 31 March 10am - 4pm) for the Big Day Art, a family day celebrating art. We will have free activities and events throughout the day that explore how we connect with art in many ways - from storytelling to visual art and music making.

Storyteller Tanya Batt will be telling tales this weekend

Francis Upritchard’s Loafers

Early in the evening of 7 March, Francis Upritchard’s Loafers was launched at the confluence of Symonds, Wellesley and St Paul Streets. It was a busy and rainy day. I felt like a witness to a true unveiling, even though I had encountered the sculptures in preceding days. The Wellesley Street over bridge has been a dead-space for years. While 1000s of people walk by daily, it has always seemed forlorn and ignored. Until now.

Trish Clark said at the event that Francis’s project has transformed this public space into a public place. She was right on mark. The bronze figures rest atop three vessel-shaped concrete plinths. They take time out to ponder people rushing by and contemplate their environment while interacting with walkers, the surrounding University buildings and the frantic roads.

The project developed from the Learning Quarter Public Art Plan; an innovative partnership between Auckland Council in conjunction with The University of Auckland, AUT University and the Committee for Auckland. Their committed aim is to enliven public places and show how public art can create places where people interrelate with each other.

Francis Upritchard is a New Zealand artist based in London. In 2006, she was the winner of the Walters Prize and represented New Zealand at the 53rd Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art with the project Save Yourself in 2009, Venice, Italy. Francis regularly returns home to New Zealand.

“The Loafers plinths reference important ceramic artist Lucie Rie, “says Francis. “Rie pioneered domestic-ware in Britain, and her small works were developed at the same time as huge outdoor bronzes and in my mind, share a sort of 1950’s aesthetic.”

I walk past Loafers almost every day. Its mix of standing and reclining figures with some attendant snakes is humorous and disquieting. Francis’s plinths feel like votive supports that honour the figures and present their miniature scale in a monumental way. They are a perfect mix for this location where you must pay attention to how you move, as the traffic’s presence is both hectic and threatening.

Congratulations Francis! It is wonderful to have your art out in public.

Photographs courtesy of David Straight.

For Christchurch

Wishing you peace on today's anniversary, and sending you hope and heart.

Pat Hanly, Hope Vessel and Heart, 1986

colour lithograph, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the artist, 1990

For your beloved - or yourself

Valentine's Day tends to polarise people.  If you're a cynic like me and don't celebrate this manufactured holiday, here are some artworks from our collection that offer a decidedly non-soppy take on love:

Fiona Pardington, Soft Target I

Louise Weaver, New Romantic (Golden Hare)

John Waterhouse, Lamia*

Gavin Hipkins, Romance: Houhora (Sheep) 2003

*On first glance, Lamia may appear to be a touching, romantic scene between a knight and his fair maiden... but don't worry, it turns out she's a man-eating serpent.


If you're an unabashed romantic, however, you might like to take a look at what's on offer in the Gallery shop:

Even the café's got in on the action:

The best part about these cookies is that they work equally well for the anti-Valentine's brigade - what better way to protest the day than by symbolically devouring a heart?

Whatever your outlook on romance, we've got you covered here at the Gallery...

Kura Te Waru Rewiri

Kura: Story of a Māori Woman Artist was launched 21 January 2012 at Mangere Arts Centre — Ngā Tohu o Uenuku. The book takes its title from the exhibition currently on display at the Centre, which was curated by Nigel Borel and opened 16 December last year. Conceived as a retrospective exhibition of a senior Māori woman artist, it offers an experience of quality ideas and achieves all it set out to celebrate. The exhibition highlights the art practice of Kura Te Waru Rewiri, a founding member of the 1970s protest group Nga Tamatoa, a fine arts educator and contemporary arts advocate, and contemporary painter.

The book launch attracted whānau, friends and artists. Tributes were made to Kura for her contributions to contemporary art and attendees were invited to take away signed copies of the publication. It is a handsome 80-page book, an example of Kura’s connoisseurship as a painter and the development of her contemporary art journey. The essays in the book form strong relationships with contemporary Māori art and the Mana Wahine art movement.

 Kura shares this legacy with painters Emily Karaka and Robyn Kahukiwa, and a range of strong women leaders who worked for Māori visibility while analysing the Treaty of Waitangi (ToW). You could say that art then was a perfect vehicle to bring Māori and the ToW to the public’s attention. Those wahine toa who were inspirational at the time were Hana Te Hemara-Jackson, Donna Awatere, Eva Rickard, Dame Te Atairangikahu and Dame Whina Cooper.

Kura publishes new writing by Nigel Borell, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Deidre Brown and myself. It brings forward the artist’s ideas and shows their relevance in today’s arts environment. The essays provide a context for the array of kaupapa Māori that Kura has explored over time, including the ToW. In this way, the exhibition and book can be thought of as history lessons you might now have learned.

We hear that Kura’s double conundrum of being a woman/Māori artist belongs to the 20th century because this is no longer politicised – even though her present-day content is just as challenging as her painting practice of the 1980s and 90s. Her 2000s’ exploration of kōwhaiwhai patterns, for example, challenge some Māori male practitioners and kōwhaiwhai is not well understood by contemporary practitioners and critics. Perhaps part of this problem is that today’s detractors still think kōwhaiwhai is what Gordon Walter and Theo Schoon painted. Yet, as is shown, by the end of the first decade of the 2000s Kura took control and brought forth new understandings, theories and a new appreciation for Māori art forms, patterns and meaning.

The book also presents information and facts not previously published about the artist. Kura changed her name by deed-poll when she was 21 years as an act of liberation. You can see this freedom in the 1971 photograph of her and Tame Iti, taken during her University of Canterbury days. She told me that she loved to go op-shop rummaging on the lookout for fur coats and Christchurch certainly had a startling array of them for a young Māori woman from the North to purchase for $1 – which was a lot of money in those days.

Kura’s personal and professional relationships are enduring and she maintains friendships with people from all cultures and walks of life. Her influence is felt in the practitioner community in her support, guidance and mentorship of artists and contemporary Māori art curators such as Nigel Borell. James Pinker, visual arts manager of Mangere Arts Centre has this to say about the launch.

‘It was a great honour to host not only the exhibition but the launch of this substantial publication and to have it in Mangere especially was of great significance to us all.’

Last words go to Nigel Borell, ‘We are all very proud and pleased with the results and look forward to finally sharing the publication with the public.’ Copies can be purchased from The Mangere Arts Centre at a very reasonable $20 each.

Rita and Douglas

Yesterday at the Gallery, Jennifer Ward-Lealand presented a preview of her brilliant performance piece - Rita and Douglas. Created by Dave Armstrong from the letters of Rita Angus and delivered with Michael Houston at piano, this theatrical portrait of the relationship between Rita Angus and Douglas Lilburn has already gained plaudits throughout New Zealand for its insightful characterisation of these renowned artists.

Based on Rita’s feisty letters to Douglas, the production affirms the intense friendship between two of New Zealand’s key artists. It reveals the creative intensity shared between two people of entirely different nature. Lovers for a very short time, but friends for a lifetime.

The brilliance of Rita and Douglas can be experienced at the Auckland Town Hall concert chamber from 22-26 November; Tuesday-Thursday 7pm, Friday-Saturday 8pm. There is a matinee performance at 2pm on the 26th. This is a must-see event. Jennifer even moves like Rita Angus, her astonishing portrayal  is uncanny and powerful for its truthful presence.

Details of this event are available at THE EDGE.

James Wenley’s Auckland Theatre blog presents a fascinating interview with Jennifer:

Image: Chris Corson-Scott

Jennifer Ward-Lealand 2011
colour photograph
courtesy of the artist

Kate Sylvester AW12

Kate Sylvester showcased her Autumn/ Winter 2012 collection at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki on Tuesday night. Inspired by Steven Shainberg’s film Secretary (2002), her designs cat-walked out from the mise-en-scene onto our mezzanine.

Many Zhu

Fashion in Motion - A Photo Essay

Through form and colour, the garments of AUT fashion designers engaged with our art collection in Toi Aotearoa, transforming the space into a catwalk on our opening day.

While photographing the event, it reminded me of something I read for my dissertation; where perhaps in the indiscernible boundary of image, body and space, those in situ of the pictures before it is a body yielding to the impulse of space; passing the image where it “… becomes a stain, it becomes a picture, it is inscribed in the picture (Lacan 97). ”

- Many Zhu

A Gallery blessing

This morning I was privileged to attend the dawn blessing ceremony of the Gallery and the unveiling of three commissioned artworks by Māori artists which form a permanent part of the building. We assembled across the road from the Gallery and moved onto the forecourt, where three intricately carved works by Arnold Manaaki Wilson were revealed after months spent hidden from the public eye.

Thanks to Bevan Chuang for supplying this image

Following the elders from Ngati Whatua who were leading the event, we walked through the doors and upstairs into some of the Gallery spaces, passing through some of the beautiful threshhold installations by Lonnie Hutchinson which divide the galleries from the public spaces in the building on every floor.

The procession continued outside to the ceremonial entrance of the Gallery where a karakia was performed over Fred Graham's sculpture Te Waka Toi o Tāmaki:

 Next we filed back inside to the atrium where a powhiri took place. Many beautiful and inspiring words were spoken in recognition of the artists' hard work and vision and the duty of the Gallery as a place to store tāonga - and some laughs shared too.

The event was captured on film as well - here's a short video of the experience:

Keep an eye on the website for more information about these commissioned works and make sure you look out for them when you visit the Gallery! Only two days to go now...

123 years ago ...

Poster advertising the opening of Auckland Free Public Library, 1887
E H McCormick Research Library, Archive Folder PH01/3

As we race towards the reopening of the Gallery this week, it’s hard not to think about how this building’s original opening day must have caused similar levels of excitement and anticipation.

Initially designed to accommodate Auckland’s public library, art gallery and municipal offices, the building’s first opening ceremony took place on 26 March 1887, when Auckland Public Library opened to a great deal of fanfare.

Sir George Grey, who was instrumental in the creation of both the Library and the Gallery, spoke at this event: ‘Often, worn out and tired, I have imagined when the day came how triumphant I should feel.’ (words which ring true to current Gallery staff!)

Unknown photographer, Sir George Grey c1863

Auckland Art Gallery opened nearly a year later, on 17 February 1888. In addition to the 14,000 books and manuscripts he had gifted for the establishment of the Public Library, Grey now donated his collection of paintings, which formed the basis of the Gallery’s permanent collection. These works hung behind Governor Sir William Jervois when he declared the Gallery open, saying:

‘I look forward to the day when this building will be too small for the Auckland Gallery of Art and the gifts of Sir George Grey and other generous people who have helped to form it... I doubt not, however, that for many a long year the fine structure in which we are assembled will afford ample space for the display of many works of art both of ancient and modern painters, which will be owned by the Municipality of Auckland.’

Josiah Martin, Auckland Free Library and Art Gallery 1887, Auckland Libraries, A11347

Jervois didn’t have to wait long for the day that the building was too small for the rapidly-growing Gallery. In 1888 it occupied a single room and was run by the city's Librarian, Edward Shillington, but by 1893 the first addition was built to house the Mackelvie Collection.

Over the past 123 years the Gallery has grown steadily, and its heritage building has grown and changed with it. In the 1880s, the opening of the Auckland Public Library and Art Gallery was seen to ‘mark an epoch in this city’s progress commercially, financially and intellectually’ – the current redevelopment project also shows us how far we have come since those early days.

Preserving the past

Paintings conservator Ingrid Ford celebrated 10 years with the Gallery over the weekend. Here’s just a short list of some of her many achievements for the conservation department during the last decade:

• Playing a significant part in the preparation of works for the Gallery’s opening exhibitions, treating numerous paintings in a wide range of styles and periods
• Overseeing the treatment, glazing and reframing of Lindauer’s historic portraits of Māori 
• Conserving artworks sent to the Gallery from other regional museums and art galleries
• Increasing public understanding of conservation, giving public lectures as well as tours of the conservation studios
• Being asked to represent the Dunedin Public Art Gallery as their conservator when they had the touring Pre-Raphaelite exhibition from the Tate Gallery
• Acting as secretary for the professional body of conservators, the NZCCM, for six years

Happy tenth anniversary, Ingrid! And thank you for everything you’ve done for the Gallery in the last decade.
You can find out more about the conservators and what they do here.

Taonga Māori in the British Museum

Today is the last day of Māori Language Week and I could not let my 101st blog be about anything other than one of the most important books published in New Zealand during 2011.

Taonga Māori in the British Museum is an emblem of scholarship that every reader of this spectacular book should be inspired by.

First published by the British Museum in 2010, and now republished by Te Papa Press, this book is a comprehensive collection catalogue prepared by Dorota Starzecka, Roger Neich and Mick Prendergrast. [ISBN 978 1 877385 76 6]

There is no comparable volume presenting Taonga Māori held in any other museum, let alone New Zealand museum. As such, the book is a tremendous challenge to local curators to work on a subsequent volume based on New Zealand collections. For a start, I would suggest publishing the Taonga Māori held by Te Papa or Auckland Museum.

This book will transform what we know about taonga not only because it gives visual access to the British Museum’s renowned collection, it has a catalogue that contains knowledge that has hitherto been inaccessible. All of the key pieces are illustrated with outstanding black and white plates and the colour plates are breathtaking.

From the author’s foreword: ‘This catalogue…contains all the information about the objects known to the authors at the time of writing.’

What a deal of new information this book contains! Professor Roger Neich has attributed many of the taonga to place and date. When he knows it, he also names tribe and, sometimes, the carver. As always with any project associated with Roger, the scholarship is exemplary. David Simmons’s wonderful knowledge is also included, which in so many cases, is complementary to Roger’s. Mick Prendergrast’s unequalled knowledge of the Māori textiles at the British Museum has ensured that the book gains much from his specialist knowledge.

This is a book that I am going to learn from every single week. I am going to start studying the textiles first.

Footnote:
When will we see a Taonga Māori textiles catalogue prepared by Dr Patricia Te Arepo, the doyenne of Maori textile scholarship. Patricia’s enthralling lectures are the fruit of her profoundly gifted and inspirational research. She is one of my favourite scholars anywhere!

The countdown has begun!

OPENING SEPTEMBER 3 2011



Art after dark

Last weekend the Gallery stayed open late - really late - as part of the Auckland Festival's White Night events programme.

The Gallery was open til midnight, with a whole range of family-friendly activities laid on.

We were staggered by the amazing public response - around 1400 people stopped by for an evening of art, stories, colour and sound!

Here are a few images of the evening:


The puppet shows were a huge success - and the high ratio of adults in the audience proved it was fun for all ages!


Making tin-can telephones to commemorate the building's history as a telephone exchange


Crowds gather to participate in an African drumming session


Sound artists created soundscapes in response to of some of the artworks on display

Thank you to everyone who came along, and to our staff for staying up late and dealing with the crowds!