How to tag lots of art

As we are looking into redeveloping our website i have been doing some research into way of engaging people with our collection.

I recently heard at the National Digital Forum, from George Oats, how Flickr has helped institutions tag their collection by leaving it open to Flickr users to add the tags of works online as part of the creative commons project. Making sure the tags come from the users rather than the institutions.

Browsing on the Brooklyn Museum's site i saw they have taken a similar route and made it into a 'game' for people to 'tag' their collection for them. You have to have an account to do this (i'm not sure about that part) but once in you are shown various items from the collection that you can describe it in words, creating tags.

Check it out here.......i'd recommend getting an account if you don't have one. It's actually quite addictive once you get started.

Once you have added your tags you can watch a 'thank you' video. A nice touch i think.

Something that will go in the vault to think of for our new website.

Any thoughts?

Cecil looking at Henry and Christopher and Augustus

Between the two World Wars, Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980) was one of England’s best known photographers. His fame resulted from two facts; he regularly recorded celebrities and he always ensured his portraits were published in magazines which had a massive circulation.

Beaton adored royalty and cherished members of European aristocracy, yet his gritty character never dissuaded him from writing exceptionally negative comments about the nobility in his tell-all diaries.

Beaton accepted the fact that he was a committed snob. He was only interested in ‘cultured’ people, those who lived privileged or extraordinary lives. The portraits he made as a war photographer frequently seem more like decorative and romantic compositions. He staunchly avoided what he considered to be 'ugly subjects' so his military images often come across like campy fashion shots of wartime. However, as a challenging artist, Beaton never let his affection for celebrating ‘taste’ deflate his personal preference for surreal, and even bizarre, photographic oppositions.

One of Beaton’s astonishing gifts was his ability to visually dramatise reality. The Gallery owns two of his exceptional photographic portraits. Beaton’s double portrait (above) of the curator Henry Geldzahler and his partner, the painter Christopher Scott, was taken in 1969, the same year in which David Hockney completed his double portrait (Abrams Family collection, New York) which was used as the photograph's hilarious back-drop. The conceit of this photograph is simple – replicate an already novel painted composition as a pictorial re-staging by using the painting’s actual subjects. In the painting both men are made to look like a zombie couple, not the adoring partners that their friends knew them to be in life.

Hockney had spent January and February of 1969 completing his huge double portrait, which the painter described as ‘St Henry radiating light visited by an angel in a raincoat’. Kynastan McShine of the Museum of Modern Art commented that the painting was 'the scene of a contemporary annunciation' (see: Peter Webb, Portrait of David Hockney, London, Chatto and Windus 1988, p103). However, Beaton’s photograph has more humour than Hockney’s portrait because the painting’s sitters are participating in a staged, and stagey, homage to Hockney's own painting of them.

Notice how comfortably the two men inhabit their trad-boho clothes in Beaton's shot. He was totally skilled at transforming the occasion of a photograph into a session of collaborative fun. Beaton's portraits on the wedding day of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II resulted in the most memorable photographs of any British royal wedding simply because he made that special photo-event into a theatrical performance with royal players.

Cecil Beaton’s compelling image of Augustus John from 1955 is a very telling portrait of an artist's personality. In England, during the early years of the 20th century, Augustus John was considered to be one of the nation’s finest painters. John’s drawing skills were extraordinary and his small-scale oil studies of his family are brimming with verve. Later, John told Cecil Beaton that ‘my wall decorations keep changing and evolving like life itself’ (see: Michael Holroyd, Augustus John, London, Penguin Books, 1976, page 717). The photographer knew that John had struggled for decades on his huge, and never to be completed, triptych of Gypsies.

Beaton simply asked the painter to sit in front of his mural. In the resulting photograph Augustus John looks frazzled, preoccupied and even physically unaware of Beaton’s presence. Five years later, in June 1960, John began his final oil portrait of Cecil Beaton who told the photographer ‘I think … this is going to be… the best portrait… that I have ever… painted’ (ibid, page 719). Sadly, John never completed his portrait of Beaton.


Image credits:
Cecil Beaton England (1904 – 1980)
Augustus John 1955
gelatin silver print
197 x 188mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1979
1979/18/3

Cecil Beaton England (1904 – 1980)
Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott and their portrait by David Hockney 1969
gelatin silver print
317 x 458mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1979
1979/18/2

George Silk’s Papuan samaritan

George Silk was one of Life magazine’s best photographers and he worked for them from 1943 until 1972. He gained an international reputation overnight from publishing his poignant photograph of a wartime samaritan assisting a wounded soldier to safety. While Silk had been born in New Zealand’s town of Levin in 1916, he immigrated to Australia as a young adult and is well-known there as an artist.

During 1939, Silk joined the Ministry of Information and soon was working offshore as a combat photographer for the Australian military, firstly in North Africa, then in Greece and finally in New Guinea. Late in 1942, he made this remarkable photograph which immediately brought his combat photography to a wide audience when it was published by Life in March 1943.

This famous image is, arguably, one of the most moving photographs from the Pacific war. George Silk made it by chance when he was walking over Papua’s arduous Kokoda track, very near the battlefield site of Buna-Gona. It was Christmas Day 1942 and he chanced upon the blinded Private George ‘Dick’ Whittington, an Australian Soldier of the 2/10th Battalion (commission number QX23902), being helped by Raphael Oimbari, a Papuan orderly. Dick had been wounded in battle and needed to reach the Australian field hospital at Dobodura.



Bearers like Raphael had already become essential to the Australian war effort in Papua and were already affectionately known to soldiers as ‘the fuzzy wuzzy angels’. (click here for more on this)

Whittington had been blinded on 24 December in the battle for control of the Buna airfield. His eyes recovered from their wounds but he soon contracted scrub typhus and died suddenly at Port Moresby on 12 February 1943. Therefore, when Life published Silk's photograph Dick had passed away a few weeks earlier.

The National Gallery of Australia organised a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work and the curator noted ‘Silk recalled that standing alone near “the front” in a field of tall Kunai grass he saw two people walking towards him. A New Guinea volunteer was tenderly helping a wounded soldier. Silk was deeply affected and his response as a photographer was purely instinctive. He took only one shot. Blinded soldier, New Guinea was a powerful replay of the Christian parable of the Good Samaritan and it vindicated the efforts of the New Guinea native volunteers whose involvement in the war was pivotal to the allies’ success.’ National Gallery of Australia

Raphael Oimbari (1920 -1996) was a member of the Papuan Koiari tribe and he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his wartime assistance to Australian soldiers. He became renowned in both Papua New Guinea and Australia and is considered one of Papua’s greatest citizens. George Silk’s photograph brought Raphael fame and respect and he has become the international ‘face’ of Papuans during World War II.

'The men of the tribes of Papua and later of New Guinea flocked to help the Aussies.... Some fought in organised Units... .However, they acted as bearers, mostly. They carried food and ammo forward and the wounded back. By so doing they created a legend.' Digger History Website


Image credits:

George Silk (1916 – 1943) New Zealand/Australia/United States of America
Blinded soldier, New Guinea

Private George ‘Dick’ Whittington being led to an aid station by Raphael Oimbari

25 December 1942
gelatin silver print
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1975
1975/75/2

Venus keeps her toes out of the water

We are back and raring to go in 2009. I meant to post about this before Christmas but it was not to be.

As part of The Enchanted Garden, our exhibition designer Scott Everson and the curator of the exhibition, Mary Kisler, decided that a water feature inside the exhibition would be perfect to enhance the 'garden' theme and provide a fantastic platform for Antonio Canova's beautiful Venus Italica (c1812) (sleeping happily in her crate below).

Now as you may already have read here we already have a forest of Pohutakawa in the exhibition so adding a pond as well has meant even more unusual goings on in the gallery. As well as wringing of hands amongst the exhibition designer and prep team.

Here is some documentary photography as Venus finds herself moved from her cosy warm crate to the middle of a pond.

Our Preparator Glen with some hazardous materials as he prepares the pond frame.

Not Sure what is going on here but i imagine some sort of sealing of the frame again by our prep Glen.



Glen putting a waterproof layer on the frame as Venus shivers in the background at the thought of leaving for the cold black box behind her.





Venus longingly looking back at her crate, as she is all wrapped up and brought out into the open.




Th sides going on the pond as curator Mary Kisler oversees the installation progress



Exhibition designer Scott and Preparator Shane check their handy-work as the stones are added to the pond.


Shane starts to put the tiles around the edge of the pond.


The pond nearly finished.




All finished as Venus rises from the water with a bottom to be admired by all. A definite highlight of the exhibition(Venus and the pond, not just her bottom).


Photos by Jennifer French and John McIver

The Enchanted Garden is on show until 8 February



Credit:
Antonio Canova
Venus Italica
marble c1812
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, gift of Mr Moss Davis, 1931

2 days to go.....installing the exhibition

All the months of selecting work and researching and writing wall texts and labels are essential for an exhibition. However, it is only when works start coming into the gallery spaces and the curator puts the puzzle together that he or she knows if the concept has worked, particularly with such a varied show as The Enchanted Garden. Scott Everson, our designer, has been busy with the preparators, painting walls, (demolishing or moving them on occasion), and working out issues to do with lighting and projection.

After crates and travelling frames have been unloaded the works are put on sponge ‘softies’ randomly against any wall space available, and it is at this point that the curator can sometimes have a moment of panic! Then, gradually, as the works get grouped according to their themes, (and occasionally one gets rejected because it just can’t fit on the allocated wall) it starts to come together. The designer, preparators and curator work together as a team, patiently moving works left or right, experimenting with a particular hang until it feels just right. It’s exhausting, both physically and mentally, but extremely satisfying when it all comes together.

With this show, there are also a range of objects from private collectors, artists’ projects and the decorative arts collection at the Auckland Museum. All of these go in last, except for a delicate embroidered quilt, which has to be suspended high on a wall. Only then can the botanical prints that sit either side be laid out. Finally, there’s the knitted tea cosy, Meissen porcelain, the Maria Loboda vase of floral curses, dvds sculptures etc.

Two days to go, but now we know we’ve got a show!

The Enchanted Garden - opens 13 December 2008


image credit:

Peter Siddell
Tombstone Angel
1975
acrylic on hardboard
Auckland Art Gallery, bequest of Miss L D Gilmour 1990

On Photography – Christmas ‘in camera’

Christmas as a thematic subject for artists is in only a few of the works in the Gallery’s collections. 13 works are tagged with Christmas in our catalogue. Two works on paper, by Richard Hamilton and Graham Smith, are fascinating as they reveal another perspective on this festive period.

Richard Hamilton’s 1971 screenprint I'm Dreaming of a Black Christmas (above) has become an emblem of the artist’s career. The image is based on a promotional photographic still from the movie Holiday Inn that shows Bing Crosby walking across the hotel’s lobby. Using the brilliant tonal range of dye transfer as his starting point, Hamilton then reverses the original colours of the film still and then adds haphazard colour shifts, while further adding both collage and wash. Such a painterly response to photography is a characteristic of Hamilton’s work. The mood is one of strange humour.



Chris Killip and Graham Smith collaborated on their important documentary project titled Another Country (above). This is not the tourist view of England but a socially conscious insider’s response to poverty. The two artists have been described as ‘documentary mavericks’. Smith stopped making photographs three years after he made this image of a ‘working class family’ feeling the stress of seven days away from Christmas. As with all great social documentary photography, the human feeling is in preponderance.

Enjoy the festivities (hopefully not too black or stressful). I will return in the New Year with more On Photography.

Click here to read my other posts On Photography.

image credits:

Richard Hamilton born 1922 Great Britain
I’m dreaming of a black Christmas 1971
Screenprint on collotype, with collage and wash
750 x 1010mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1975
1975/16/1

Graham Smith born 1947 Great Britain
One Week Before Christmas 1987
From the series: Another Country
Gelatin silver print
407 x 508mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 1987
1987/29/1

Putting down roots in the gallery

Part of the upcoming exhibition - The Enchanted Garden, involves an artists project by Monique Redmond.

I was fortunate enough to hear from the curator, Mary Kisler, about Redmond's ambition for this project; to create a Pohutukawa Forest in the gallery. As i like to show some of the more unusual behind-the-scenes happenings at the gallery, the arrival of a forest of trees into the gallery seemed to fit.

Above is Monique Redmond who i like to think is checking out the height of the latest delivery of Pohutakawa trees with in trepidation.

How many preps does it take to make a forest?!

Looks like a rare sighting of the red headed prep lost amongst the forest. Apparently quite tame though.

......that's all I can reveal but if you want more, the exhibition opens on Saturday 13th December, come and see if they have flowered especially for the opening weekend. Fingers crossed!

On Photography - Florence Henri

The acquisition of modernist photographic portraits has never been a strategic focus for our international collection. Nevertheless, the Gallery acquired from a Sothebys auction during 1979 sale a remarkable self portrait photograph by Florence Henri. Although she was born in New York in 1893, Henri trained at the Bauhaus at Dessau as a Swiss citizen. She worked under the direct tuition of her teachers Lazlo Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers. As an artist, Moholy- Nagy was fascinated with still life, distorted perspectives and the employment of multiple reflections. Such approaches to representation encouraged her to experiment with the medium of photography, which later worked set up her freelance career in Paris (1929 to 1963) as a successful portrait, fashion and advertising photographer.

Mirrors, glass and chromium-plated balls surfaced in her photographs during 1928. All of these images started out as pre-visioned still lives. Using her recently purchased Leica I, she prepared miniature tableaux in her studio for the sole purpose of a photographic record. These works contrast scale with complex reflections.


Henri’s Self Portrait of 1928 is rarely found in a period vintage print. The version that the Gallery acquired was printed later, which is obvious from the type of photographic paper she has used that certainly post-dates World War II. This may be the brilliant Agfa Brovira paper, which became available in France after 1946. This particular print has sustained chemical blemishes from what appear to be the artist’s own fingerprints which she has attempted to cover with a stippled spotting technique.

This famous Self Portrait has a stunning composition. The contrast of vertical and horizontal planes, the oddly sized mirror, the playful metallic reflections and the artist’s own tight pose - imitating a sculptural bust’s format - are all controlled by a tense and surprising design.

Click here to read more On Photography by Ron Brownson


Image credits (top to bottom):

Florence Henri (1893-1982) Switzerland
Self Portrait 1928 (printed later)
Gelatin silver print
279 x 190mm
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1979
1979/18/1

Detail: Self Portrait 1928

The Enchanted Garden - Pulling it all together

While in many contemporary exhibitions, it is not usual practice to write extended labels for individual art works, for a large scale summer show that ranges across a wide theme they are an integral part of the experience.

I am an inveterate hoarder of magazine articles, second hand books, extracts off the web, etc so when I started to plan The Enchanted Garden exhibition I already had a lot of material to hand. However, without the assistance of the Gallery’s librarians, who are always happy to source material, it would not have been possible to cover the range of themes that I have. Even after writing 130 extended labels (some loans don’t have them) there is still so much more that could be said.

It is when you write the wall texts that the exhibition really comes together. Sometimes wall texts are really obvious and simple, but on other occasions narrowing down what you need to say, and tying different aspects of a show together, can get very challenging. Then everything has to be edited carefully for any errors or oversights – a daunting task that requires the assistance of willing readers.

While it is the registrar’s job to assist by liaising with artists and dealers when bringing works into the gallery, our designer has also been busy working out how to best display the range of works. Spaces change between exhibitions and for this show we have opened up the atrium, so the centre of the gallery is flooded with light.

Luckily most of the walls have remained in the positions created for the previous show (2008 Walters Prize), but the spaces are starting to look very different as new colours go on the walls. In this way we can tie particular works and themes together.

One of the preparators has constructed a circular table that is also an interactive for children, and a Temple of Vesta has been constructed as one of the four activities that we are offering to booked tours for people with visual impairment, to give added meaning to two prints which show the Temple in its natural surroundings. Much to do…

Click here to read more posts on The Enchanted Garden
Click here to visit The Enchanted Garden on the Auckland Art Gallery website

December on the gallery development site

Well, it's the 2nd of December and the pace of 'deconstruction' has not slowed down! Now that all of the 'non-heritage' parts of the building have been removed - the middle section and the 'wedge' (as the gallery staff call it!) to the rear of the building - you can get a very clear understanding of how the buildings must have looked back in the late 1800's and early 1900's!

The Wellesley and Kitchener wings soar along Wellesley and Kitchener Street. Built at a time when the Park and trees were not as well-established as today - this building, which housed the council's municipal offices, a library and art gallery - must have dramatically changed the city landscape.

The now temporarily free-standing building adjacent to the park - the East Gallery - was built in 1916 to address the need for more gallery space. It is one of only two day lit galleries of its kind in New Zealand - where the light is admitted through a roof-based monitor and diffused through a lay-light. It's exciting to think we are going to be able to enjoy the gallery in a way that our forebears did when we re-open in 2011. Then, though we will enter at a slighter higher level than before, so that visitors do not need to negotiate stairs to get into this gallery.

By removing the 'wedge' which used to contain the goods lift and various back of house necessities, you can glimpse the outside of the original Wellesley wing on its northern side. It is easy to see the outlines of windows on this wall if you look at the images on the gallery's webcam. The intention is to make reference to this in the new building - in the south atrium which replaces the wedge at the south eastern end of the building.

At the moment work is focusing on ensuring that the heritage buildings are secure. Obviously in a project of this kind, you don't just pull down the bits of the building you don't want! The six buildings that comprised the art gallery as we knew it, were so closely packed, that enormous care has been taken when removing the more recent additions.

Once everything is satisfactorily secured, attention will turn to the next stage of the building project - which will be excavation to create a lower basement and a basement in the middle area between the two historic buildings. It reminds me a little of the Auckland Museum project. I remember being invited to a tour to look at the enormous hole that had been excavated! I can also remember the excavations for the Sky Tower - I was working in a building that overlooked the site. Our digging will probably seem insignificant in comparison! Still exciting though!

image credits (top to bottom):

1st December 2008
Auckland Art Gallery webcam

Henry Winklemann
W39
Date: 1903
Special Collections, Auckland City Libraries

Detail of webcam image