Shaky grounds

If you want to study the progress of a muddle in which two reasonable ideas get mashed into one stupid one, you need go no further than yesterday's NZ Herald editorial. The theme is grabbing some Te Papa action for Auckland with the NZH quickly finding the silver lining in Wellington’s recent earthquakes. Calling them “the catalyst for the advancement of the concept of Te Papa North” and unashamedly reaching for a cliché award by pulling out the “eggs-in-one-basket” argument, the big idea is to hot-foot a chunk of the National collection North.

Hamish Keith’s original Te Papa North concept was to have some of the great works from the National collection on show in Auckland as part of a series of curated exhibitions in a stand alone destination building. It was certainly not to help out Te Papa's everyday challenges in securing the storage of items many of which are not of great interest or necessarily in a condition to be presented to the public.

As to Auckland taking advantage of storage problems highlighted by a couple of earthquakes - be careful what you wish for.
 
Image: Te Papa storage via colourmefiji

Snap shot

Anyone with an interest in the contemporary photography market will have had a fascinating week as the results of the latest Auckland auctions came to hand. Although Webb’s only offered three photographic items they scored with Michael Parekowhai’s large format Elmer Keith. From his series of sparrows and rabbits made in 2000 The Beverly Hills Gun Club, it went for $18,400. A couple of days later another photo of Elmer Keith No 1 (this one made four years later on a slightly different coloured background and pointing the other way) went for $17,600 at Art + Object. And good luck to future researchers trying to work out the titles, sizes and poses of all these sparrows if the original records are ever lost. The original BHGC works were sold for around $3,000 and over the years the prices have climbed steadily (in 2005 one sold for $8,226). Also at Art + Object a couple of Ava Seymour’s large-scale images went for over $15,000 between them.

However, despite the attractions of some large format photography the media continues to struggle to get the attention it deserves. The chance to purchase Peter Peryer's classic paired portraits of Erika Peryer for around $10,000 was passed up (Te Papa and the Auckland Art Gallery both have one each which probably put them out of contention as they were paired at auction). Peryer’s Octopus sold for a healthy $5,976 and sounds like it was purchased by a collector who has dominated the Peryer market at auction over the last few years.

But in spite of these specific examples there's still a great opportunity to build a major photography collection without spending mega dollars. Most of the images on offer, and many of them were classics, would have been hammered down for $2000 a piece. It can’t last.

An addendum to our post on the Friendlander photograph of Ralph Hotere vs the Hotere drawing. Game set and match to photography. The portrait went for $9200 and the drawing failing to get a bid.

And now for something completely different

Te Papa plans to keep changing its new look art display but already you'd have to ask when works from the National art collection ever looked this good. It's probably not been since Te Papa opened 11 years ago. Not much sculpture this time round (apart from Michael Parekowhai’s red piano Story of a New Zealand river which has achieved Te Papa icon status) but the works on the walls look impressive and are juxtaposed to suggest intelligent connections and differences.

Te Papa's CE Michael Houlihan said recently that museums never lose their original culture. Te Papa has always had a 'make-it-simple-and-tell-'em-and-tell-'em-again mantra that still echoes through its galleries (absurdly large labels, signage everywhere). This spirit-of-the-schoolroom is exaggerated in the current presentation by a literal DIY ‘classroom’ (frame your own drawing, match bits of the collection in a Killeen lookalike, create fridge magnet poems, trace drawings) in the middle of the two main gallery set-ups.

The idea that art can’t really speak for itself was firmly implanted into the Te Papa way of thinking by Ian Wedde. He was the institution’s first Concept leader for art and later Head of art and visual culture. His influence remains in Te Papa's tendency to over-explain, over-simplify and in the process confuse themselves and us into the bargain. 

An example? Close by a classic Gordon Walters painting there's a cartoon think bubble (it feels more like a public programmes intervention than curatorial) telling us that Walters “liked to create optical illusions with paint” while on the other side of the room a label quotes Walters specifically telling how he added grey to his work to stop the image “jumping around too much.” The idea that people would see his works as optical illusions like those by British artist Bridget Riley always concerned Walters. His intention was to refine and balance the components of his paintings rather than agitate them. Besides why not let people think about what Walters was about for themselves rather than sum him up ... and get it wrong?

Still this culture of over-explanation, whatever the intended audience, is the going price for the chance to see a whole heap of interesting work intelligently displayed. And as a bonus in a section called Gifted there's the chance to see a donated collection of Aboriginal art given the space and respect it deserves for the first time. Even if that had been the only thing on display it would still be well worth the trip to the fifth floor.

Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have arrived at overthenet.blog@gmail.com: at the govett-brewster they appear to have hired an offshore curator (thanks n) before a new director, well it worked well last time #deepsarcasm • also in np (thanks various letters of the alphabet) the battle between the gb foundation and the len lye trust has required formal mediation #whycantwealljustgetalong • meanwhile (n again) simon rees has been flagged as frontrunner for the director job #pokerface • in wellington another welshman has joined the exec of te papa • hamish keith has been decurmudgeoned from the listener • the new director for the aag has purchased an apartment within walking distance of the gallery #workaholic • oh, and apparently no one is meant to know that two aag patrons were key members of the selection panel for the new director of the aag #notawordtoanyone • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and for anything that makes us laugh out loud insane rewards.

Te party

It’s been four years since Te Papa last had an Impressionist exhibition from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. That was Monet and the Impressionists an exhibition that stumped up 140,000 visits according to the 2009 annual report or around 1,500 a day for its three month run. 

The new show slated to open on Friday hasn’t got quite the same sting in its title. Colour & Light: Impressionism from France & America sounds a bit like one of those lectures you skipped in Art History (well we did anyway) but Te Papa will have high hopes for it. A crowd pleaser could give a significant kick start to the next financial year‘s attendance figures and this time they're playing the long game: 183 days (it’s more of a long-term loan) as opposed to 92 days for the last Boston effort. 

As we have mentioned before, the Boston Museum of Fine Art uses extensive loans from its collection as a major revenue stream. In an odd mirroring of Te Papa the Bellagio Gallery, located in the eponymous casino in Las Vegas, has just closed Claude Monet: Impressions of Light on loan from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and opened Warhol out West from the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Give us a sign

As you may know Te Papa is committed to “signposting pathways to the future” and “saving the planet” but how it plans to do all this is still rather up in the air. Exhibitions like the Warhol one and the upcoming Aztec spectacular were both organised after these ideas were nailed but they do seem pretty business-as-usual in SPTTF and STP terms.  So too is the thought of creating a replica of a World War I trench some 15 or so years after Auckland Museum’s effort Scars on the heart. Then there is Te Papa's habit of rehiring staff to set their ideas  into action. As we have reported before Jonathan Mane-Wheoki is back and so too are Karen Mason and Tracy Puklowski. They're all in senior management positions joining long-time resident Claudia Orange who has also been shifted into one of the new top jobs.

A clue as to how Te Papa is thinking about how to change the world came from CE Mike Houlihan when he talked at a recent Museums Aotearoa conference on the topic of leadership (you can watch to it here). It turns out Houlihan preferres the idea of leading to leadership (he likens the latter to the style of Germany’s Senior Management team during the Second World War). Institutions can do 'leading' best he explained by being guided by the existing institutional culture. “I am a great believer in the history of the institution,” he stated going on to quote a British study that found “the culture of museums tends not to change from their founding culture.” Houlihan claims to be working “within the culture of the organisation” which may explain the rehires and certainly suggests that SPTTF/STP are rhetorical devices rather than an action plan.  

But is it right to say that the culture of museums tends not to change? Half close your eyes and you can almost see the founding director Cheryll Sotheran steaming at the sight of her radical vision for Te Papa being reshaped into the more conventional museum we now see emerging. Signposting the future? Probably not.

Andy and 99 in 66

As Warhol hits Wellington here is an all but forgotten Warhol commercial job from the mid sixties that combines the Te Papa show’s interest in personalities, (Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 in the TV comedy Get Smart was a huge star) with popular culture. Felden’s clothes were designed by Gayle Kirpatrick and the photographs were taken by Roger Prigent. Even in the mid sixties and in spite of his growing fame and sales Warhol was convinced he had to keep the commercial work going. Thanks to assemblyplantmarietta for leading the way.

Like a rolling stone

In Malta thinking about Te Papa

Busted

Spare a thought for Te Papa as it prepares for not one but two blockbuster exhibitions this year (Andy Warhol and Treasures of the Aztecs). Both are crucial to ensuring attendances do not fall below the 1.3 million Te Papa has settled into over recent years. The trouble is that blockbusters tend to be expensive to mount and it's hard to predict the big winners. It certainly can be a complete crapshoot when it comes to making money or even breaking even.

Insight into what is involved in an Aztec Treasures type show has been revealed by the Australian Museum in Sydney with some numbers around its Alexander the Great: 2000 Years of Treasures from St Petersburg. Alexander pulled in a modest 161,145 visitors and according to the museum will ‘hopefully’ break even.  For context Te Papa's Monet and the Impressionists attracted 152,000 visitors in 2009

We did some estimates on what break even might mean for Alexander. Ticket prices were $28 Adult; $72 Family (2 adults + 2 children); $21 Concession; $14 Child and we figured of the 161,145 visitors 55 percent were adult, 25 percent kids, 5 percent families and 10 percent concessions. Then we threw in 5 percent for free admissions. In terms of ticket revenue this all adds up to around $4 million and yet Alexander still only broke even (hopefully). And the costs can be huge, Alexander required 29 curators to accompany it across the world. Still, the Australian Museum remains game; it's one of the Australian venues taking Te Papa's Aztec show.

The investment into these blockbusters is more about marketing the museum and attracting attention than it is about making a return. That’s why although museums can allow some blockbusters to fall on the red side of the ledger, they really do have to get those numbers through the door.
Images: Back in the day queuing for Tutankhamun at the British Museum in 1971

Woulda, coulda, shoulda

When Te Papa was built in the late 1980s the spectre of Frank Gehry hung over the result. At Ian Athfield's invitation Gehry had been part of a proposal for the building but it didn’t make the final cut. That Gehry went on to deliver the hugely acclaimed Guggeheim Museum at Bilbao has always encouraged NZ critics to wave the we-could-have-had-that stick. It was indeed a great period for him. We saw another wonderful building that would have been in Gehry’s mind when he was thinking about Te Papa. This one is the stunning University of Toledo Art Building attached to the neo classical Toledo Art Museum. Often such co-locations are riddled with corny ‘references’ to the original building in terms of form and decoration, but not this time. Gehry has chosen to see the art museum as what Billy Apple would call ‘a given’ and responded with a tumbling mid-Western fort that updates the columned treasure chest metaphor. More recently the Japanese team SANAA have added a brilliant glassed in courtyard. The addition is so seamless we assumed it was part of the Gehry original and only learned later of SANAA’s role. Perhaps SANAA could come over and work with Te Papa #daydreambeliever.

Te Papa...

...making a splash in New York.

The volume business

For some time now Te Papa has been promising to up its art game on the fifth floor. Last week CE Mike Houlihan hit the ball right out of the park announcing on TV, “You’ll actually see the amount of space for art here at Te Papa growing by about 400 percent over the next four years.” We understand that this expansion involves refurbishing the spaces currently occupied by research collections and admin plus a big chunk of space on another floor. Over all we’re talking around 8,000 square meters of new space with access from the first floor. So what will be shown? Well, we even have a pretty good idea about that thanks to the new permanent collection hang Te Papa launched last week. 

Looking through the comprehensive presentation of art work and background material on the accompanying website, it seems the ‘new look’ has around 250 works on display in this first iteration. These are wrapped around Te Papa’s usual range of themes - Art of the twentieth century, Home, land and sea, Framing the view, Emblems of identity. It's what you might expect from a National institution but definitely more Tate Britain than Tate Modern. If you're looking for the more challenging art of the last twenty years this is not going to be for you. The most recent contribution is 25 works on paper by Andrew McLeod commissioned by Te Papa (maybe referencing its 1998 opening commissions by Jeff Thompson, Jim Speers, Gavin Chilcott, Jacqueline Fraser et al - and no, not that et al.) Then there's Michael Parekowhai with one work (the piano), Shane Cotton with a very small painting, Niki Hastings-McFall with a necklace, Yvonne Todd with a suite of images (not on the website as far as we could see) and three works from Australian Nick Mangan. Together they pretty much carry the load for the twenty first century.

Maybe the traditional wait-and-see for some consensus about who and what is important makes sense for Te Papa. Installations, performance art, video installations and more rambunctious contemporary work have always struggled on the fifth floor (although the new 8,000 squares may give new opportunities). 

More contentious though is the absence of some of the classic greats from Te Papa's collections. There is no sign, for example, of a major late work by Colin McCahon. Now that's something we'd argue should always be on display at Te Papa. And still there is the women thing. Six of the twelve shows include no women, and less than 15 are represented in the entire hang with only two of them born after 1950. 

NOTE: We did make an effort to see the new hang the day after it opened, but it was closed (who knew) so this post is based on the record of Te Papa’s new hang of their permanent collection as detailed on the website.

Curator tales

Te Papa is now advertising three new positions for the curatorial team for art. This is part of a restructure that allocates the art curators to the ‘Museum of the Future’ (new art) and the ‘Living Museum” (old art). The new positions are for:  modern art, historical international art and historical New Zealand art plus there's half a curator for historical photography.

The long-awaited role of Senior Curator (Sarah Farrar is currently acting in the role) has still not been advertised but there are strong indications that it is not being seen as a key position. The first is that the Senior Curator won't have any input into the selection of this new bunch of curators and the second, from the new job descriptions, is that she or he will only have a ‘mentoring and coaching’ relationships with the other curators rather than line responsibility. The curators will report directly to the Operations Manager (oh, oh). We have also heard there might be a Head of Art job to come. Wonder what they'll do? So by our count Te Papa now has around nine art curatorial positions. Let's watch out for announcements about more/ better space for art and funding shifts.  After all, these people are going to have to do something. 

You can read the job descriptions and what Te Papa hopes from these new appointments here.

Image: a genuine curator’s egg

Spam

unvarnished facts, reckless guesswork, insinuations and possible inventions that have landed in our email: te papa has advertised four art curator positions to help them 'enter a bold new phase' and 're-organise for the future' • dealers and auction houses report a stampede of hotere resales being offered to the market just days after the artist’s death • want to know where the money goes? this year cnz has announced when grants will be published on their web site and next up are the quick response grants on 14 march at 5 pm • the aag search team for a new director is thought to be jenny gibbs deputy chair of regional facilities, robert domm chief executive of regional facilities and an ex art museum director from australia (edmund capon?) • peter robinson and fiona connor have been selected for the 2013 instanbul biennale • a nielsen quality of life survey found only 7 percent of aucklanders ‘agreed strongly’ that their city had a culturally rich and diverse arts scene • starting work on the len lye centre will be further delayed to later this year as the tender winning construction company finishes the new plymouth police station • webb’s are following art + auction’s temp exhib at 30 upstairs in wellington last year with their own temp exhib at the new the young • any missed details, indignant denials or additions gratefully received, and any that makes us go into ‘wish we’d thought of it’ mode will be rewarded with an overthenet painting horse badge.

Our promise to you

Who wants to develop “an understanding and appreciation of art’s complex role in reflecting and affecting how people relate critically and creatively to a changing world”?

Who feels their role is to “to act as a forum for change” ?

Who believes “The collection is fundamental to the Gallery’s exhibition programme”?

Who are convinced that they have placed their city and New Zealand “firmly on the international cultural map”

Who claims to be the “the home of the visual arts in New Zealand”?

Whose “guiding ethos follows a transparency of ideas in the production and communications of exhibitions and in developing content for public fruition”?

Who intends to find “synergies between the global and local"?

Who knows that “good art can make an immediate and important impact”?

Who has “unswervingly followed a path of presenting leading edge contemporary art”?

Answers here

Onward my brave Hawkmen

It’s not everyday that the people running our cultural institutions let their guard down and reveal what they're thinking - particularly about the future and how it might affect their audiences. In the weekend a long piece in the DominionPost got Te Papa CEO Michael Houlihan to open up on the ways Te Papa intends to implement its radical new plan to split into a museum of living culture and a museum for the future. They are:

Create a display of a Gallipoli trench

Display more of the fine art collection

Continue showing art on the fifth floor

Collect furniture

Collect video games

Change the Treaty of Waitangi exhibit

Exhibit more photography

Record plays and performances

Tour Te Papa exhibitions

Not be the home of the usual museum-going crowd

Let the magic begin

Image: Red stave chair by Humphrey Ikin purchased for the Te Papa collection in 1997

The upward spiral

All art museums need more space. Our own Te Papa has plans in the wingsand the Govett-Brewster is off on a new build for their Len Lye Centre. But how about this idea for enlarging the Guggenheim Museum? It comes from Athens-based architects Oiio

SFW

As Te Papa prepares its own Andy Warhol exhibition it will be aware of the controversy over the censoring of Warhol’s work in Asia. The latest bout started when his portraits of Mao Tse Tung were excluded from the exhibition Andy Warhol: 15 minutes eternal shows in Beijing by the Chinese Ministry of Culture. More weirdly the Singapore Government also put the skids under the Mao pics in the same exhibition for a very specific reason. It does not allow political leaders to be represented in works of art. At all. While not a great moment for audiences or curatorial independence, before we get too carried away let's acknowledge our own well developed mode of censorship - self-censorship.

The self-censorship by curators and museums has ensured that virtually nothing has been seen of Warhol’s homoerotic work of the seventies: not his best work, doesn’t fit the curatorial theme, wrong dates etc. etc. The definitive MoMA retrospective had only three mild examples as opposed to 10 images of Mick Jagger. Needless to say examples of this work won't be seen touring Asia any time soon. The pages illustrating this post show the absurdity of where this can all lead. Here's what Frankfurt’s very reputable Kunsthalle did to Jeff Koons’s Made in heaven series in their catalogue for a recent Koons painting show and made itself look ridiculous in the process. Which of course is what censorship is good at.

Image: The Kunsthalle Frankfurt catalogue featuring a carefully trimmed ‘detail’ of Glass dildo by Jeff Koons. Yes, that it is Cicciolina's high-heeled foot you can see.

The Monday chart

An OTN reader responds.
(Thanks again L, hope you don't mind the redraw)

Back to the future

If you want to look at art for the next while, don't go to Te Papa. The fifth floor will be all but closed for 60 days while they install what they claim will be a ‘dynamic’ way of exhibiting art that is to open end March. 

This will be Te Papa’s opening act of the implementation of its recently adopted vision: Changing Hearts, Changing Minds, Changing Lives. Running parallel of course is hiring new people to set this new course. 

The first two have been appointed: Associate Director Museum of the Future and Associate Director for Museum of Living Culture. So where do you go to get change agents with the fresh new ideas? 

The new Associate Director for Museum for the Future Karen Mason comes from the Auckland Museum. She worked for the National Art Gallery back in the 1980s and was Exhibition Concept Developer and Creative Director at Te Papa. 

Associate Director Museum of Living Cultures  is Tracy Puklowski who is from Wellington’s Turnbull Library. She previously worked at Te Papa as head of the Art and Visual Culture.

LATER: Oh, and apparently they are going to action the new focused by splitting in two