The British invasion

A review of the Paul Nash show at Dulwich Picture Gallery caught my eye over the weekend. I first learnt about Nash's work when working on my thesis on Peter Tomory, the director of the Auckland Art Gallery from 1956 to 1965.

It was looking at the collecting practices of New Zealand galleries at this time, and reading Tomory's art historical texts (drawing links between our surrealists/romantics and England's), that brought the large numbers of British modernist works in New Zealand collections to my attention for the first time.

Jonathan Jones this week, reflecting on the Nash exhibition and the Henry Moore show at Tate Britain, wrote that "British art from the years 1900 to 1950 is unlikely to be found in huge quantities in many museums of modern art you visit around the world."

We might not call them 'museums of modern art' here, but we certainly have our fair share of British works. I'm a bit of an Eric Ravilious fan, for example. I don't run my nose up at Te Papa's Nicholson or Ceri Richards, or Auckland Art Gallery's John Tunnard. The Rex Nan Kivell gift of modernist prints distributed British artists' work across Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery ,Te Papa, and Dunedin Public Art Gallery*. And of course Frances Hodgkins is a British painter in all but place of birth.

*DPAG helpfully confirmed by @ChchArtGallery

Image
Eric Ravilious, The Commander of a submarine looking through a periscope, 1941. Colour lithograph. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, gift of Rex Nan Kivell, 1953. No known copyright restrictions.

Besties II

Best news

The Julian and Josie Robertson promised gift of 15 international artworks to Auckland Art Gallery.

Best new comms tool

Twitter is a top competitor for 2009 word-of-the-year. Christchurch Art Gallery, City Gallery Wellington, Auckland Museum and Te Papa's Collections Online twitter accounts are all run by people who give a damn about their audiences, and that's what makes them work.

Best read

New Zealand doesn't suffer from a lack of writing about art, but we do lack of analysis of the art sector and the way it does (and sometimes doesn't) function. David Marr's The Henson Case was published in October 2008 but as I didn't read it until this year, I'm counting it as 2009's best read: a lucid and considered, but pacey, account of the unfolding of the controversy surrounding Henson's photographs of a naked adolescent.

Raymond McIntyre appreciation day 2009

Over the past few weeks I've spent quite a lot of time looking at Raymond McIntyre's portraits. I'd rather like to see them (or the ladies, at least) shown alongside Yvonne Todd's cosmetic counter women.

By the by, I found all these images at once using the DigitalNZ Search; Christchurch Art Gallery, Auckland Art Gallery and Te Papa have all added their records to the search, meaning you can go to one place and search all their catalogues at once.

Images, from top

Suzette, 1912-14, oil on panel. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery, presented by Mrs M Good, London, 1975.

Edward McKnight Kauffer, c.1915, oil on panel. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, gift of the estate of C. Millan Thompson to mark the occasion of the retirement of the director, S.B. Maclennan, 1968.

Felice, c.1913, oil on panel. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1976.

Lizette, c.1913, oil on panel. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1976.

Haraldur Hamar, c. 1923, oil on hardboard. Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, purchased 1983.

Ruth, 1912-14, oil on panel. Collection of Christchurch Art Gallery, presented by the McIntyre Family, 1938.

Dross, dross, dross, dross, dross, gem

Amidst the plethora of articles about the purported collapse of the art market (which are so repetitive I'm going to spare you links) lurks the odd spark of interest. Yesterday, it was Carol Vogel's article in the New York Times looking at what impact corporate belt-tightening might have on American museums and galleries.

Directors interviewed for the article seem to have been remarkably frank. Glenn Lowry acknowledged that MoMA has instituted a temporary hiring freeze and a 10% cut in its operating budget; Brooklyn Museum's Arnold Lehman said they were struggling to find sponsorship to pay for a scheduled Yinka Shonibare retrospective.

Vogel also pointed to an increasing number of collection-based shows (rather than shows reliant on costly loan works) as evidence of cost-saving. However, as LACMA's Michael Govan noted, the news might not be all bad: if art prices go into freefall, “maybe we’ll finally be able to afford to buy things.”

This morning the article seemed even more relevant as here in NZ councils started announcing planned spending cutbacks. Without wanting to jinx anything, you've got to wonder what this might mean for the redevelopments of Auckland Art Gallery and City Gallery Wellington ....

Round the web

Ed Winkleman on overprotective gallerists

Lisa Boyle on closing a dealer gallery

Sarah Eades with pictures of an emptied out Auckland Art Gallery

The Guardian's competition for young critics includes advice from the professionals. From Adrian Searle: "If you don't like looking, don't write about art."

UPDATE What every gallery needs - ducklings

So long

Mary Kisler has just written about Peter Tomory's death on the Auckland Art Gallery blog. Tomory died yesterday.

Peter Tomory was director of the Auckland City Art Gallery (as it was then) from 1956-1964. He followed on from Eric Westbrook, and was only the second trained gallery director to work in NZ, coming out from England after short stints in several regional galleries.

Tomory, along with a small and close-knit staff at the Gallery which included Colin McCahon, cleaner-turned-keeper, did some bloody amazing things over those years. They ran a relentlessly-paced exhibition programme, shipping in shows from overseas and touring shows throughout New Zealand. Tomory introduced the yearly survey of contemporary New Zealand art - the predecessor of City Gallery's Prospect series.

Tomory also drew up a expansive acquisition policy, largely focused on strenghtening the international collection - New Zealand art would follow a bit later. He researched the collection, often calling on colleagues around the world for attributions and further information. He faced down an outraged council twice, once over the Henry Moore show (admittedly, a bit of a set up) and once over the Barbara Hepworth acquisition, when he threatened to resign should the Council force the Gallery to withdraw from the deal.

And he wrote - boy, did he write - texts that became the backbone of Brown and Keith's Introduction to New Zealand 1839-1967, and which came under attack (often unfairly, in my opinion) by the "post-nationalist" critics in the 1980s/1990s.

But the thing that really inspired me about Tomory and his crew is that they truly believed that something was at stake. They really believed that art could make society better - that people deserved access to art, and art deserved an audience. And that that audience should be informed. And they worked like dogs to achieve this.

After leaving Auckland Tomory taught and curated in the States, before going to Melbourne to set up the art history department at La Trobe. In an address he gave there, he stated that maybe the most important thing an art history department can do is produce an informed and sympathetic audience for the visual arts. Earlier, in Auckland, he said that it wasn't the gallery's role to cosset working artists: it was the gallery's role to create an audience that would go out to the emerging dealer galleries and support artists there. And that wouldn't get in a strop when you tried to buy a piece of abstract sculpture.

Since then, nothing's changed, and everything's changed, and one of the things I think has changed the most is that that almost visionary passion - that utter committment to what a gallery is trying to do for and with its community - has leached away somewhat. I know it's easy to idealise a time you weren't there for, but I do hold a candle for the Auckland City Art Gallery, c. 1960.

Welcome to the blogosphere

Auckland Art Gallery has opened up its blog

http://aucklandartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Great Tate Mod Blog

Tate Modern have launched a blog inviting the public to submit images & ideas to help them "create a photographic 'Mood Board' of the kind of interior spaces, ambience and designs that people would like to find" in the Herzog and de Meuron-designed planned extension.




Currently the blog features "posts" by Jacques Herzog, Nicholas Serota and Culture Secretary James Purnell. It'll be interesting to see what the take-up is like: the "best photos and ideas" will be displayed at the Tate next year.

A more low-tech way of approaching this would be just to put comment boards up in the gallery, and allow visitors to scribble ideas, tack up images, or draw. An interesting idea Auckland Art Gallery and City Gallery Wellington could look into for their redevelopments, as a way of engaging their audiences.

Image from the Guardian website

For sale: hanging space in established art venue

$100 buys you a metre of wall space at Auckland Art Gallery, as part of the fundraising for the $96 million extension. And an invitation to a party. And a certificate. Who needs artist-run spaces?

Succession planning

Today Over the net notes that Paula Savage has been the director of City Gallery Wellington for the past sixteen and a half years.

The post dovetails nicely with two articles I've read this week, which have got me thinking about the way we approach succession planning in New Zealand's art galleries.

In the New York Times this week, Charles McGrath looks at Philippe de Montebello's 30-year tenure as director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and at possible successors to the 71 year old. McGrath quotes de Montebello:

“The job doesn’t even resemble what is once was,” he said, listing all his increased bureaucratic responsibilities: dealing with the legal and human resource departments, overseeing publications and, more recently, negotiating with foreign governments that demand the return of artworks they argue were acquired illegally. ...

“If we were to project forward the person I was 30 years ago, that person wouldn’t remotely be qualified for this job,” he said. “I wouldn’t want the job either, because frankly I wouldn’t want to spend so much of my time on nonartistic matters.”

Meanwhile, on the Guardian art blog, Charlotte Higgins speculates on who will replace Charles Saumarez Smith, who resigned as director of the National Gallery after 'only' five years.

In her post, Higgins notes how nice it would be if the people looking to appoint Saumarez Smith's sucessor looked beyond "the legions of more-or-less interchangeable white Caucasian men in nice suits in their 40s" and took a risk - as with the appointment of Neil McGregor (a magazine editor) to the role in 1987.

Higgins also observes that the "vast amount of money" invested in leadership development schemes for arts professionals in England (such as the Clore Leadership Programme) does not seem to have resulted in a phalanx of new contenders for leadership roles.

So - bringing this all back to New Zealand. How do we talk about Paula Savage's successor? Over one-too-many drinks after an opening? Or publicly, through an engaged media, who understands that the people who run our arts institutions imbue them with their own personalities?

And just as importantly - who's out there to replace Priscilla Pitts in Dunedin, or Savage, or Chris Saines, who would be likely to leave Auckland when (if?) the gallery's redevelopment is completed. How are we preparing for the future? And who are we preparing for it?

Imprinting the littlies

Education programmes in cultural institutions are motivated by a number of factors; the Ministry of Education LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside The Classroom) initiative, institutions' belief in their role to educate and enlighten the public, and (to put it crudely) a get 'em while they're young philosophy.

This post from 19 October this year by Auckland-based marketing consultancy G2 looks at the Auckland Art Gallery's recent expansion of their education programme for primary school student through the lens of 'live event marketing experiences'. G2 cites a 2005 survey by Jack Morton Worldwide which found that experiences where 'consumers interact with products, brands or “brand ambassadors” face-to-face are among the most effective ways to influence coveted consumer audiences.'

And here, the AAG's original media release about their new art education experience.