SILVER MEDAL

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31539, 29 November 1967, Page 18

SILVER MEDAL

The Canterbury Society of Arts has awarded its silver silver medal for disc tinguished services to visual art in New Zealand to Dr E. H. McCormick, of Auckland. This was announced at the annual meeting of the society last evening.

The president of the society (Mr S. E. Mair) said Dr McCormick’s works placed him as the first authoritative historian of New Zealand art, and it was to him as an art historian that the award was made. The medal will be presented to Dr McCormick at the opening of the society’s autumn exhibition, in April. Dr McCormick, who is aged 61, was born in Taihape, and educated at Wellington College, Victoria University College, and Clare College. Cambridge. For a time he was a school teacher, and then had short terms on the staffs of the Dunedin Public Library, the Hocken Library, and the National Archives until 1937.

He became editor of the New Zealand centennial publications in 1939 and 1940, and then went to the Middle East and Italy on war service. He was later in charge of Army archives. Research

In 1947 he was appointed a lecturer in English at Auckland University, but resigned in 1951 to devote all his time to literary and historical research. He lectured on New Zealand literature at Leeds University in 1962. Dr McCormick’s publications include “Letters and Art in New Zealand” (1940), “Works of Frances Hodgkins,” “The Expatriate” (1954), “Eric Lee Johnson" (1956), “New Zealand Literature,” “Tasman and New Zealand” and “The Inland Eye” (1959). Previous silver medal awards have been made to Sir James Hay, New Zealand Newspapers, Ltd, for its secondary schools art competition, the Canterbury artist Sydney L. Thompson, and last year to Mr P. A. Tornory, ' formerly director of the Auck- ; land Art Gallery and now a ■ lecturer at the Elam School ;of Art.