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?

In the trenches

... sometimes I advocate for more art gallery blogs

... sometimes I smack myself in the head and wonder why

Nothing but net

Or more appropriately - nothing to do with art.

Every now and then I find a new online tool that changes my life, in a large or subtle way. Getting a feed reader was one of those moments (and yes, I've tried to convert you before). It's completely revolutionised the way I engage with news, ideas and people online.

A subtle improvement: when I found out that in Firefox (and if you're not using Firefox, what kind of art-loving liberal are you?) clicking on a hyperlink using the scroll button on your mouse forces the page to open in a new tab.

My newest find is Google Notebook. If you do a lot of research on the net, copying and pasting chunks of text and URLs into Word docs for later reference, this will change your researching life. It's simple, lightweight, and being an online application you can access it anywhere - fantastic if, like me, you work from two different computers. [If you just want to save interesting web pages but your Favourites are overflowing, I recommend Ma.gnolia].

Call me gullible

But on Friday afternoon I chose to believe this is really what it claims to be.

Private / public

Over the last few weeks, there's been an interesting little flurry on the American blogs, on the topic of publicly-funded institutions building shows out of the holdings of private collectors.

At the beginning of this week, Richard Lacayo blogged about the National Gallery of Art, Washington, exhibition "The Art of the American Snapshot, 1888-1978".

Lacayo liked the show, but observed that it would have been nice to mix these vernacular photos in with the work of Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander (etc). This wasn't possible because the show was drawn from a single person's collection - Robert E. Jackson.

About six weeks ago Tyler Green lambasted the NGA over the show, for fluffing collectors. Green felt that (1) the NGA shouldn't do vanity exhibitions and (2) the NGA effectively abdicated responsibility for the show - curating the collector, not the collection.

Green weighed in again yesterday; Lacayo replied that he was okay with shows built from private collections, more iffy about permanent installations of private collections; ModernKicks posted a thoughtful consideration; Regina Hackett doesn't agree with anyone.

Of course, I understand that when an institution shows a private collection they're increasing its worth (well - if they're any good at what they do they should be). But New Zealand's gallery system would be sunk without private lenders: very few institutions can afford to collect comprehensively anymore, and moreover, I have the feeling young curators are losing interest in working on / with permanent collection (to whit, this article) .

Overall, the question seems to less about the content, more about who gets to 'own' the presentation. Is it okay for a curator to make a show from a single (private) collection, not okay for the collector to do it? What about taking a whole show from a dealer gallery? Or consistently sourcing exhibitions from the same small group of suppliers? When do networks become cabals?

Nothing else matters

Via Regina Hackett - via Richard Lacayo - via Alec Soth - via Mark Sullo - I present 'Square America', a celebration of vintage snapshots & vernacular photoography.

Recalling the glorious Melbourne mug shots, the site includes sets on ...

... sleep ...

... dance ...

... and 'candid' street photography ....

A warrior with his camera

Current small obsession: Australian photographer/cinematographer James Francis Hurley (1885-1962), and his photographs of Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1916).

Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, was destroyed by pack ice: the expedition camped on a giant ice-floe for 5 months. In April 1916 the crew was able to launch the ship’s rescue boats and sail to Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton and five crew members sailed 1,300km in a small boat to reach South Georgia, and then trekked across the island to a whaling station to find help.













Images from the Alexander Turnbull Library collections: available via the Timeframes website by searching on 'Endurance'.

New kid on the block

The Tauranga Art Gallery was opened on Saturday, with guest speakers Prime Minister Helen Clark, Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby and ... Lynn of Tawa addressing a crowd of 400 people.


The Gallery has an operating budget of about $1 million, mostly funded by the Tauranga City Council. This is already under threat, with Councillor Murray Guy pushing to halve the Council's subsidy over the next five years, and introduce an entry charge next year.

Images: from the Tauranga Art Gallery website (gallery image from open day earlier this year)

Coming soon to a gallery near you

The announcement of the MCA Sydney's 2008 programme helps outline what we NZers will be seeing next year. On the cards (warning - PDF) is a Fiona Hall survey show, co-curated by the MCA's Vivienne Webb and City Gallery Wellington's Paula Savage and Gregory O'Brien, with opening dates in Wellington (28 June) and Christchurch (4 December).

Personally, I'd rather they brought out the exchange show the MCA is doing with the MCA San Diego: San Diego gets Australian video art, Sydney gets Robert Irwin, John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger & Ed Ruscha.

Bloomberg is reporting this is the first step in a partnership to bring an Olafur Eliasson show to Sydney: the Daily Telegraph has it from 'feisty' director Elizabeth Ann McGregor that the show's coming via San Francisco and New York in Spring 2009. One can only hope they'll flick it our way: I'd trade Hall and San Diego for that.

Paying the piper

The more I read about the way American galleries and museums are funded and managed, the more I wonder whether New Zealand might be blessed with its municipally-funded public art galleries and centrally-funded contemporary art spaces.

While of course there have been times where the art community has felt that council involvement has negatively affected art gallery operations (Michael Laws and the Sarjeant, the gone-very-quiet Paradigm shift, what's-its-name in the Waikato) you've got to wonder sometimes what the alternatives are. If you're not going to have your gallery funded by ratepayers, and overseen by officials elected by those ratepayers, or funded by taxpayers, and overseen by government, what are you left with?

In this context, Joe Nocera's 8-page interview in the New York Times with ex-Dia director Michael Govan and ex-Dia board chairman Leonard Riggio over the creation of Dia:Beacon and the subsequent unravelling of their relationship makes fascinating reading.

Image: by Dave Kemp, via Flickr.

0800 ART

Never invited to the best dinner parties or after-opening Chinese restaurant soirées? Never fear - now you can get your hot art information over the phone.

APT Intelligence has gathered a roster of artists, curators and critic, and time-poor collectors can now book phone consultations with an advisor matched to their interests:

Our advisors/experts are actively involved in the young emerging art scene around the globe, covering established markets in the US and Europe as well as upcoming regions such as Latin America, India, China and the Middle East. No group of individuals is better positioned to comprehensively cover young emerging artists around the world. APT Intelligence provides access to this unique network of experts through phone consultations and customized tours.

Fees start at $350 for a half-hour. You'd hope the advisors have a nice phone manner.

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?