New director for gallery

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32847, 22 February 1972, Page 10

New director for gallery

Mr Richard Teller Hirsch has been appointed director of the Auckland City Art Gallery. He was special curator of the James A. Michener Collection of American Twentieth century paintings at the University of Texas, Austin, before his Auckland appointment, which he will take up in April.

The present city gallery director, Mr G. C. Docking, who has held the post since 1965, is retiring for health reasons and will live in Sydney. Mr Hirsch was director of the Allentown Art Museum in Pennsylvania for nearly 10 years and he organised an exhibition of American contemporary painting which toured Australia and New Zealand in 1965. In 1967 he received a study grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for research on small Renaissance bronzes and the painted works of Titian’s pupils. Mr Hirsch, a former chairman of the Southern Art Museum Directors’ Association, has published extensively on art and historical topics in both specialised periodicals and in popular forms.

His background includes the Ecole de Louvre and the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs, both in Paris, where he lived for 24 years. He is preparing a book on the French painter Eugene Carriere, a close friend of the sculptor Rodin, and a book on the last of the French royal architects, Adrien Paris.