As Head of Department for Art History at the University of Auckland since 2010, Caroline Vercoe has found new ways to foster postgraduate study, and a very successful postgraduate conference was held in November 2010. There has been a substantial rise in postgraduate numbers this year, many students attracted by the new Honours course on Art Curating and Writing run in collaboration with the Auckland Art Gallery, and coordinated by Ian Wedde.
The Department was pleased to welcome Greg Minissale to the staff at the beginning of 2010, and he has already made his presence felt with courses in contemporary art and theory, including a popular undergraduate course, Framing the Viewer. With his doctoral research on Indian art he is particularly well qualified to contribute to the new course on Global Art Histories that he and Caroline Vercoe will present in Semester 2 this year. Greg is currently working on a book for Cambridge University Press, The Psychology of Contemporary Art.
Len Bell’s book Marti Friedlander (Auckland University Press, 2009) was a finalist for the New Zealand Post National Book Awards in 2010 and has already been reprinted.
Iain Buchanan’s long-awaited book on the Habsburg tapestries is currently in press, and anticipated to appear this year. Following on the publication of her edited book on Henrietta Maria, Erin Griffey is currently developing a data base of works in the Stuart collections which is attracting international support. Robin Woodward has produced two monographs published by White Space – Steve Woodward Sculptor and Mary McIntyre Painter – in 2009 and 2010 respectively. Seven years’ research for Elizabeth Rankin, with printmaker Philippa Hobbs, culminated in a book and exhibition on the black artist Peter Clarke, Listening to Distant Thunder, in Johannesburg in May, which will travel to the South African National Gallery. In another collaboration, this time with past PhD student Kriselle Baker, Elizabeth co-edited a book on recent photographs by Fiona Pardington, launched at her Govett- Brewster Gallery exhibition in New Plymouth in June 2011.
Members of staff have also presented papers at many different events – AAANZ of course, but also such conferences as the British Art Association (Glasgow); CAA (Chicago); CIHA symposium (Johannesburg); Contained Memory (Wellington); International Deleuze Studies (Amsterdam); Renaissance Society of America (Montreal); Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (Arizona); National Portrait Gallery (Canberra); and Iain Buchanan was invited to contribute to the Mercury and Herse Tapestry Symposium at the Prado.
There is a strong sense of anticipation in Auckland as we count down to the opening of the refurbished Auckland Art Gallery on 3 September, just before the start of the Rugby World Cup – undoubtedly no coincidence, though it is hard to imagine too many rugby aficionados planning to spend a lot of time in art galleries. For the Auckland Triennial, 2010, Last Ride in a Hot Air Balloon, curated by Natasha Beckman, the gallery co-opted a number of sites across the city. But generally Auckland art lovers have had to make do with the somewhat truncated scale of the New Gallery venue, which has not daunted members of the gallery staff who have mounted several interesting exhibitions, currently Local Revolutionaries, 1965-1986, and Goldie and Lindauer: Approaching Portraiture. Mary Kisler has put this time to particularly good use, bringing out her book Angels and Aristocrats, a lavish volume on historical paintings in New Zealand collections. Other exhibitions involving Auckland University staff at the Gus Fisher Gallery are Len Bell’s very successful Marti Friedlander, and Elizabeth Rankin’s Collateral: Printmaking as Social Commentary (with Christchurch artists Michael Reed and Sandra Thomson, American Daniel Heyman, and South African Diane Victor): sales from her catalogue for Collateral are being donated to Gap Finder – an initiative to support Christchurch artists to create performances and installations at sites made vacant by the earthquake, in a city shorn of many of its arts venues.
David Maskill