Art loans refused

Press, 28 September 1988, Page 11

Art loans refused

Works from the Robert McDougall Art Gallery will not be hung in Canterbury hospitals. The cultural and community services committee of the Christchurch City Council yesterday turned down the Canterbury Hospital Board’s request for paintings to display in its hospitals.

The Robert McDougall Art Gallery’s director, Mr John Coley, was emphatic that paintings, entrusted to the gallery to care for, should not be lent into an uncontrolled environment.

“You are asking staff trained to care for these works to go against that training and let the works out where there is no control or protection for them. Every work in the collection has a value... we believe that to buy them. We can’t judge some as of lesser value and able to be lent out,” he said.

He reminded councillors that one painting lent by the gallery to the Christchurch Drainage Board had been stolen. “No-one noticed for three days that it had gone,” he said. Paintings from the gallery on display at the Town Hall had been vandalised, he said. “The gallery is a museum and you are

asking us to release these works,” Mr Coley said.

He suggested the Hospital Board was in a position to support Canterbury’s art community by buying its own works for display. Both the Canterbury Public Library and the C.S.A. Gallery had collections especially for hire, he said.

Mr Coley said that if the board could not direct funds for buying paintings the walls should be left bare. Some councillors felt that a flat refusal of the request was a negative approach to the board’s request and so Mr Coley’s services as an adviser will be offered to the Hospital Board to help it with a collection of its own.

• “The board has some works. It’s just that it does not have enough for its new building,” said Cr Carole Evans.

“If only a small part of the millions of dollars for the new building was set aside, the board could have the' nucleus of a worthwhile collection,” Mr Coley said. Mr Coley was a member of the board’s aesthetics and murals committee for two years. The council committee is awaiting a report from its officers on art in public places.