Dispute Over Sculpture Show

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31760, 17 August 1968, Page 40

Dispute Over Sculpture Show

(N.Z. Press Association)

NEW PLYMOUTH, August 16. The sponsoring company and the New Plymouth City Council, or its library committee, should seek a compromise to allow .the exhibition of sculpture by Rodin and his contemporaries to be displayed in New Plymouth, the president of the Taranaki Society of Arts (Mr A. J. Reeves) said today.

The director of the proposed Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (Mr J. Maynard) said

that adverse comments which had been made about nude works in the exhibition would mean that New Plymouth would once again be labelled as the last outpost of Victorian morality. The exhibition was shown in Christchurch earlier this year during the Pan Pacific Arts Festival. Mr Reeves said it would be a shame if a deadlock between the New Plymouth Library Committee and Alfred Dunhill (N.Z.), Ltd (the sponsor), meant that New Plymouth would miss the exhibition.

The committee has rejected an application to display the exhibits in the library and the company has said alternative suggestions were unsuitable.

“The exhibition, which has taken many years to collect, has already toured Australia and South Africa and we are the only place to put up any barrier,” said Mr Reeves. He saw the exhibition in Wanganui and said it was well worth while, “with nothing crude or against anyone’s morals." Mr Reeves said that the library committee’s decision, in over-ruling the opinion of the librarian that the exhibition could be accommodated, gave further incentive to get the art gallery completed. Mr Maynard emphasised that his criticism was confined to remarks at the library committee’s meeting about the nudity of some of the exhibits, and particularly to claims that the exhibition

would attract people who would make vulgar remarks. Mr H. D. Multon said at the meeting that the exhibition would attract teddy boys and teddy girls. He said people should not be allowed to express. their vulgar opinions in the presence of people who did not want to hear them.

Trophy for Rindless Cheese. —The Thomas Clement Perpetual Trophy, for the dairy factory gaining the highest points for its rindless-cheese exports to the United Kingdom, has been won for the second consecutive year by the Whenuakura-Waverley Co operative Dairy Company, Hawera.