Auckland Art Gallery
New Zealand · Oceania
About
Auckland Art Gallery (Māori: Toi o Tāmaki) is the principal public gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. It has the most extensive collection of national and international art in New Zealand and frequently hosts travelling international exhibitions. Set below the hilltop Albert Park in the central-city area of Auckland, the gallery was established in 1888 as the first permanent art gallery in New Zealand. The building originally housed both the Auckland Art Gallery and the Auckland public library, and opened with collections donated by benefactors Governor Sir George Grey and James Tannock Mackelvie. This was the second public art gallery in New Zealand, after the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, which opened three years earlier in 1884. Wellington's New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts opened in 1892 and a Wellington Public Library in 1893. In 2009, it was announced that the gallery received a donation of artworks from American hedge fund manager Julian Robertson, valued at over $100 million, the largest ever of its kind in the region. The works were put on display in 2024.
Throughout the 1870s many people in Auckland felt the city needed a municipal art collection but the newly established Auckland City Council was unwilling to commit funds to such a project. Following pressure by such eminent people as Sir Maurice O'Rorke (Speaker of the House of Representatives) and others, the building of a combined Art Gallery & Library was made necessary by the promise of significant bequests from two major benefactors, former colonial governor Sir George Grey and James Tannock Mackelvie. Grey had promised books for a municipal library as early as 1872, and eventually donated a large number of manuscripts, rare books and paintings from his collection to the Auckland Gallery & Library (in total this amounted to over 12,500 items, including 53 paintings). He also gave material to Cape Town, where he had also been Governor. The Grey bequest includes works by Caspar Netscher, Henry Fuseli, William Blake and David Wilkie. Mackelvie was a businessman who had retained an interest in Auckland affairs after returning to Britain. In the early 1880s he announced a gift of 105 framed watercolours, oil paintings, and a collection of drawings. His gift eventually amounted to 140 items, including paintings, decorative arts, ceramics and furniture from his London residence – these form the core of the Mackelvie Trust Collection, which is shared between the Auckland City Art Gallery, the Public Library and the Auckland Museum. Mackelvie's will stipulated a separate gallery to display his bequest; this was not popular with the city authorities, but a special room was dedicated to the collection in 1893 and eventually the top lit Mackelvie Gallery was built in 1916. The Mackelvie Trust continues to purchase art works to add to the collection, which now includes significant 20th-century bronzes by Archipenko, Bourdelle, Epstein, Moore and Elisabeth Frink.
The Auckland Gallery collection was initially dominated by European old master paintings following the standard taste of the 19th century. Today the collection has expanded to include a wider variety of periods, styles and media, and numbers over 18,000 artworks. Many New Zealand and Pacific artists are represented, as well as Europe, and material from the Middle Ages to the present day. Notable New Zealand artists with extensive representation include Gretchen Albrecht, Marti Friedlander, C.F. Goldie, Alfred Henry O'Keeffe, Frances Hodgkins, Gottfried Lindauer and Colin McCahon. Some of these works were donated by the artists themselves.
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.