Director may go to Europe

Press, 26 April 1978, Page 1

Director may go to Europe

The director of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery (Mr B. D. Muir) may be sent to Britain and Europe next year to shop for $60,000 worth of modern paintings. His trip would be paid for by the Christchurch City Council, which has been asked by its cultural committee to approve $58,000 for art works purchases in the new estimates. Of that, $28,000 would be for local buying, and $30,000 would be set aside with the same amount the next year for overseas buying. “We will be spending money to save money,” said the committee’s chairman (Cr Helen Garrett), “because it will be far better to buy on the spot.” The inevitable question — whether ratepayers’ money should be spent that way during hard economic times was asked by Crs P. J. R. Skellerup and D. J. Rowlands. The Mayor of Christchurch (Mr H. G. Hay)

said the council had to remember that other cultural activities, such as the Arts Centre which required major strengthening, would also need money this year. A committee report said that acquisition of New Zealand art works was "successfully keeping pace” with developments in this country, but the permanent collection of European works had grown much more slowly. Some representative works were needed, and coverage of British landscapes was poor. Good examples were still available from $5OOO to $40,000. Modem European paintings had been largely ignored so far, and the gallery was “constantly embarrassed by this major gap in our holdings,” the report said. Good paintings by aucb artists as Picasso, Manet, Renoir, Paul Klee, Matisse, Modigliani, and Cezanne were available for $lO,OOO and more.