Displaced legacies : European art in New Zealand's public collections

Abstract

In 2007 Random House invited me to write a book on European works of art in New Zealand’s public collections. Such a project has been a long time coming, the only book of its kind being Peter Tomory and Robert Gaston’s European Paintings before 1800 in Australian and New Zealand Public Collections, published in 1989, which listed the works rather than interpreting them. Tomory and Gaston had limited themselves to all works before 1800, and it quickly became apparent that the subject today was much larger than would fit in the average sized art book. A decision was reached to narrow the scope of the work, not to a clear cut-off date as was the case with Tomory and Gaston, but rather to move slightly forward into the nineteenth century, including such works that had continued in the style of the centuries before. In doing so, the project immediately became more manageable, and a possible format more logical, but inevitably it meant that New Zealand’s extremely fine Victorian and Modern collections became displaced, awaiting their turn for similar attention in the future. While the project is ongoing, my research so far has made me conscious of the way in which various other forms of displacement lie at the heart of these collections and the institutions responsible for their care — displacements that are geographical, political, social and individual.