Peak oil and art galleries

In April 2008 the Canadian federal government is phasing out its Exhibition Transport Services (ETS), which provides affordable exhibition transport. Canadian galleries and museums are predicting that touring costs are going to triple, and that institutions off the main routes are going to be cut off.

Back at home, the price of food at the cafe closest to work is about to increase, because of price rises in flour, milk, petrol etc.

All of which makes me wonder: what's going to happen in New Zealand as petrol prices (and presumably, insurance costs) keep increasing? Without some sort of subsidy (and currently CNZ is the only ready option I can think of) will small galleries and museums be able to access touring shows?

And will we continue to see international touring exhibitions, like William Hodges at the Auckland Art Gallery (still one of my favourite shows of the past few years) or City Gallery Wellington's regular infusions from Australia, such as Hany Armanious, Patricia Piccinini, and Tracey Emin?

Coming this week

After a lot of tub-thumping last week (about succession planning for New Zealand art gallery directors; plans for touring art exhibitions to regional galleries; and the dearth of blogging in our public arts institutions) this week Best of 3 will be profiling some soon-to-open shows around the country (mostly).

In the meantime, check out Over the net's post on the length of 22 New Zealand art gallery directors' tenures ....

What goes on tour ...

This week I've banged my drum on a few pet topics, namely blogging and succession planning in New Zealand art galleries.

Another pet topic is the touring of art exhibitions. I've thought for a while now that New Zealand would benefit from a central organisation to coordinate the touring of shows around the country.

I'm particularly interested in seeing shows get out of the four main centres and into the smaller, regional galleries - Wanganui, Hawkes Bay, Palmerston North, Gore. And for a system to be developed where the fees charged for touring shows to bigger, better resourced galleries could help subsidise the fees for smaller, poorer galleries.

At the top of the post is a (slightly crappy) image of page 55 of Creative New Zealand's new Strategic Plan for 2007-2010 (available here - but warning, as a quite hefty PDF).

CNZ have identified 4 strategic priorities:

1. New Zealanders are engaged in the arts
2. High quality New Zealand art is developed
3. New Zealanders have access to high quality art experiences
4. New Zealand arts gain international success.

Under no 3, the 'delivery of the arts' has been identified as a key objective (thank goodness for all the diagrams in this document, I'd be lost without them). And under this objective is this interesting wee snippet of text:

We will invest in providers who deliver high quality arts experiences for New Zealanders in the metropolitan centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. These opportunities will include:

• facilitating the touring of work
• investing in key providers to deliver quality arts experiences locally and regionally.

We will invest in targeted opportunities that provide high-quality arts experiences in up to four identified provincial centres.

We will develop systems that enable organisations to better monitor audience numbers attending events.

We will develop and implement a touring strategy [my emphasis].

So today I'm holding out hope.

You can order a hard copy of the Strategic Plan from this page on the CNZ site.