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City Gallery Wellington

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City Gallery Wellington
Te Whare Toi
A trapeze outside the City Gallery
Map
Former namesWellington Public Library
General information
TypeArt Gallery
Architectural styleArt Deco
Location8 Mercer Street, Wellington, New Zealand
Coordinates41°17′19″S 174°46′38″E / 41.288518°S 174.777270°E / -41.288518; 174.777270
Current tenantsCity Gallery
Construction started1935
Completed1940
Technical details
Structural systemreinforced concrete frame
Floor count2
Floor area3,900 square metres
Design and construction
Architect(s)Gummer and Ford
Other designersStuart Gardyne (refurbishment architect)
Awards and prizesNZIA National Award 1994

City Gallery Te Whare Toi is a public art gallery in Wellington, New Zealand.

History

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City Gallery Te Whare Toi began its life as the Wellington City Art Gallery on 23 September 1980 in a former office block located at 65 Victoria Street, now the site of Wellington Central Library. The first exhibition was a group show of Wellington artists.[1] In 1989, as work began on the new Wellington Library and Civic Centre,[2] the gallery relocated to the other side of Victoria Street to occupy the old Chews Lane Post Office for four years until 1993[3] when it was rebranded as City Gallery and moved to its present location on the north-eastern side of Civic Square.[4] Since 1995, City Gallery has been managed on behalf of the Wellington City Council by the Wellington Museums Trust which now trades as Experience Wellington.[5]

Towards the end of 2023, around three years after initiating the restructuring of the City Gallery, Sarah Rusholme resigned as Chief Executive of Experience Wellington and was replaced by Diana Marsh.[6] Other senior members of the Experience Wellington leadership team left at the same time as Rusholme, including Elizabeth Caldwell, the ex-Director of the City Gallery.[7] In 2024 after months of heavily reduced hours[8] Marsh announced the closure of the City Gallery to at least mid-2026. Two upcoming City Gallery exhibitions were scheduled to be exhibited at other venues but Marsh commented that restricted finances would place limits on what else could be achieved during the closure.[9]

The current building

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City Gallery currently occupies the former Wellington Central Library building. Built in 1940 in an Art Deco style, this building replaced the original red brick City Library of 1893.[10] The building was registered in 1981 by Heritage New Zealand as a Category 2 Historic Place.[11]

When the Wellington Central Library relocated to its new Ian Athfield-designed building in 1991,[12] the building underwent a major refurbishment so it could meet the needs of a contemporary art gallery. The Gallery's window installation was installed in 1994. Fault is by Bill Culbert and Ralph Hotere and consists of two strips of neon light cutting diagonally across the building.[13] A significant addition built in 2008-2009 added two new galleries for emerging Wellington, Maori and Pacific art along with a 135-seat auditorium.[14]

Since 2019, the roof of the gallery has hosted a 16 ft (5 m) sculpture of a hand with a face called Quasi that was created by Ronnie van Hout. In October 2024, officials announced that Quasi was to be removed and transferred to Australia.[15]

Directors

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Photo of large building covered in coloured dots.
City Gallery covered in dots during the Yayoi Kusama exhibition.

The first Director was Seddon Bennington, who went on to be the second Chief Executive of Te Papa.[16] He was followed in 1982 by Ann Philbin who described the challenge of the Gallery's cramped quarters on Victoria Street, "When you work from a gallery that is not beautiful or grand—that does not even have a fridge or public toilets for functions—you have to sell your ideas."[17] Philbin was followed by John Leuthart in1985 who appointed the Gallery's first curator Gregory Burke two years later. Paula Savage became Director in 1990[18] and oversaw the Gallery's move to the current location and its rebranding as City Gallery. The rebranding cemented a long-term relationship with the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi[19] resulting in a number of award-winning ads.[20] In 2009 Savage was responsible for one of the Gallery's most popular exhibitions: Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years[21] with an attendance of 88,155. The same year she appointed City Gallery's first Curator of Māori and Pacific Art Reuben Friend.[22] Elizabeth Caldwell followed Savage who left the Gallery in 2011 after twenty-two years as its director.[23]

Exhibitions

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1982 Greer Twiss: a Survey 1959 – 1981[24] curated by the Director Seddon Bennington was the first major touring exhibition instituted by the Gallery.

1986 David Hockney: Hockney's Photographs was the first of many popular international exhibitions and City Gallery's first fee-paying show. To accommodate it, the Gallery was required to install air conditioning to meet international conservation standards.[25]

1986 Karanga Karanga was the first public art museum exhibition in New Zealand of collaborative works by wāhine artists. Listener reviewer Georgina Kamiria Kirby described it as, "An exhibition done by Māori women, about Māori women, for Māori women"[26]

1990 Now See Hear! Art, Language and Translation[27] was the most ambitious exhibition attempted by City Gallery up to that time. Curated by Gregory Burke and Ian Wedde to mark 150 years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi,  it featured 236 New Zealand and international artists.[28]

1993 Rosemarie Trockel  was the first exhibition City Gallery toured outside New Zealand when it travelled to the MCA in Sydney. It was curated by Gregory Burke[29] and opened City Gallery's new building in Civic Square. Alongside the Rosemarie Trockel exhibition were four shows of women artists: Alter/Image, Te Whare Puanga, and Jacqueline Fraser's project He Tohu: The New Zealand Room. Alter/Image surveyed twenty years of work by New Zealand women artists.[30]

In 1998 City Gallery worked with the acclaimed Dutch curator Rudi Fuchs to present The Exhibition of the Century: Modern Masters from the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam[31] which included artists ranging from Vincent van Gogh to Jeff Koons. In 2006 a major exhibition by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini[32] attracted a record audience for the time of 120,000.[23]

Since opening at its current location in 1993, City Gallery has also hosted monographic exhibitions of many other major international artists including Tracey Emin, Keith Haring, Rosalie Gascoigne, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Tracey Moffatt, Sidney Nolan, Bridget Riley, Sam Taylor Wood, Salla Tykkä, Hilma af Klint, Stanley Spencer, Wim Wenders as well as New Zealand's own Laurence Aberhart, Rita Angus, Shane Cotton, Tony Fomison, Bill Hammond, Ralph Hotere, Ronnie van Hout, Melvin Day, Martin Thompson, and Boyd Webb.

A full list of exhibitions, catalogues and relevant commentary is hosted on City Gallery's Past Exhibitions page.[33]

Controversies

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In 1995 a petition by the Christian Heritage Party collected 2829 signatures and an advertisement was placed in an unsuccessful but controversial attempt to close the Robert Mapplethorpe Retrospective[34][35] exhibition at City Gallery. In March 1999, the same group tried to have the Keith Haring[36] exhibition closed. They suggested that the police should photograph everybody visiting the exhibition,[37] and complained that although the catalogue accompanying the exhibition was classed as unrestricted by the Office of Film and Literature Classification, the exhibition itself featured works of sodomy and bestiality that were not suitable for families.[38] The party then submitted 18 works to the Office of Film and Literature Classification, but the case was not heard until after the exhibition closed.[39] The censor classified five of the submitted works from the exhibition as "objectionable unless restricted to people over 13 or children accompanied by a parent or guardian".[39]

Early in 2021, Experience Wellington announced a restructuring process[40] which included changes to the staffing of City Gallery, the disestablishment of the role of a dedicated director,[41] the removal of the senior curator Robert Leonard[42] and the appointment of a curator Toi Māori.[43] The restructure proved controversial, and although questioned by the Mayor[44] and opposed by senior members of the wider arts community,[45] it was fully implemented and the role of Director disestablished.[46]

References

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  1. ^ "Opening" (PDF). Retrieved 10 January 2023.
  2. ^ "Civic Centre". Retrieved 10 January 2023.
  3. ^ Leuthart, John (1989). "City Gallery on the move: a temporary location at Chews Lane" (PDF). AGMANZ News. 20 (4): 20.
  4. ^ McKee, Hannah (7 August 2014). "Gallery marks 21 years in city's heart". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  5. ^ "Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs)". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  6. ^ "Capita Culture Bites". The Post. 10 January 2024. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  7. ^ "Arts News". 4 February 2024. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  8. ^ Amery, Mark (4 April 2024). "City Gallery facing threat of Temporary Closure Because of Access Problem". Scoop. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  9. ^ Amery, Mark (14 April 2024). "With City Gallery closing for two years, what's next for Wellington?". RNZ. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  10. ^ "Te Hītori o Ngā Whare Pukapuka o Te Whanganui-a-Tara History of Wellington City Libraries". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  11. ^ "Wellington Central Library (Former)". Heritage New Zealand. Retrieved 28 July 2024.
  12. ^ Honey, Tommy. "30 Years on: the Wellington City Library". Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  13. ^ "Civic Square Wellington City Art Gallery". Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  14. ^ "City Gallery / Architecture +". Retrieved 11 January 2023.
  15. ^ "A New Zealand city waves goodbye to its giant hand sculpture that many came to love". Associated Press. Retrieved 30 October 2024.
  16. ^ McDonald, Greer (31 August 2009). "Seddon Bennington: A life less ordinary lived to the full". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  17. ^ "Flashback: A History of the Wellington City Art Gallery to 1988". Retrieved 13 January 2023.
  18. ^ "Art Gallery Director Sees New Directions". Evening Post. 4 July 1990. p. 41.
  19. ^ "Paula Savage The Fine Art of Selling an Institution". Midwest (6): 10–12. 1994.
  20. ^ "The Exhibition of the Century". YouTube. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  21. ^ "Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years". Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  22. ^ "Images: Parihaka works at City Gallery". 24 September 2009. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  23. ^ a b Cardy, Tom (7 December 2011). "Head of Wellington's City Gallery Quits". The Dominion Post.
  24. ^ "Greer Twiss: A Survey". Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  25. ^ "David Hockney's Photographs". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  26. ^ Kirby, Georgina (12 July 1986). "A Calling out a Gathering". NZ Listener: 32.
  27. ^ Now see hear! : art, language and translation. Ian Wedde, Gregory Burke, Wellington City Art Gallery. Wellington [N.Z.]: Victoria University Press for the Wellington City Art Gallery. 1990. ISBN 0-86473-096-9. OCLC 25246022.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  28. ^ "Now See Hear: Art, Language and Translation". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  29. ^ McDonald, Lawrence (1994). "Rosemarie Trockel". Art and Text. 47.
  30. ^ "Gallery to Celebrate Twenty-one Years in Former City Library Building". 31 July 2014. Retrieved 14 January 2023.
  31. ^ Art in the 20th century : modern masterpieces from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, City Gallery, Wellington, 1998. City Gallery Wellington, Amsterdam. Stedelijk Museum. Wellington, N.Z.: City Gallery. 1998. ISBN 0-9583554-7-9. OCLC 82817183.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  32. ^ "Patricia Piccinini in Another Life". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  33. ^ "Exhibitions: Past". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  34. ^ "Robert Mapplethorpe Retrospective". Retrieved 22 January 2023.
  35. ^ Campbell, Gordon (30 September 1995). "The Freedom to Be Shocking". New Zealand Listener.
  36. ^ "Keith Haring". Retrieved 22 January 2023.
  37. ^ "Haring exhibition offends party". Evening Post. 23 March 1999.
  38. ^ "Gallery bows to pressure ". The Dominion. 14 April 1999.
  39. ^ a b "Artist's work classified month after show ends". The Dominion. 5 August 1999.
  40. ^ Chupko, Andre (16 April 2021). "Major restructure proposal for Wellington cultural institutions". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  41. ^ Chumko, Andre (9 June 2021). "Wellington's City Gallery loses dedicated director in restructure, organisation confirms". Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  42. ^ Paul-Wood, Andrew (2 May 2021). "Changes at City Gallery...absurd...cynical". Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  43. ^ Chumko, Andre (12 June 2021). "Restructuring Will Make Experience Wellington Sustainable Boss Says". DominionPost.
  44. ^ Chumko, Andre (22 May 2023). "Wellington Mayor concerned about City Gallery restructure". Retrieved 15 January 2023.
  45. ^ Keogh, Brittany; Chumko, Andre (26 May 2021). "'Changes' to Experience Wellington restructure proposal questioned by art world". Retrieved 16 January 2023.
  46. ^ "Gallery Saga: One in, One out? The Big Idea". 10 June 2021. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to City Gallery Wellington.

Wellington's Old Buildings, David Kernohoran, Victoria University Press 1994, ISBN 0-86473-267-8, page 184

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