The N. Z. Times SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1908. ART IN WELLINGTON.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 6450, 22 February 1908, Page 8

The N. Z. Times

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1908. ART IN WELLINGTON.

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Wellington owes a debt of gratitude to the members of the Academy of Fine Arts which it is apparently very slow to recognise. Considering the size, wealth, and importance of the community, it is greatly to onr discredit that we should have allowed a few individuals to bear all the burden of a task which, even if it ought not to bo official and municipal, should at least have been shared by tho majority of the citizens. Small as the collection of pictures acquired by the Academy necessarily is, it shows what can be done by persistent and enthusiastic effort, and effectively indicates what large and satisfactory results might be achieved if only all local lovers of art were not content „ merely to admire art’s creations. Of the thousands who visit the gallery and linger there to feed the eye and the imagination, what proportion considers it incumbent upon them to augment the fund out of which the pictures are bought? We do not doubt that as time goes on the public disinclination—perhaps it would ■be more accurate to say tho public indifference—to giving, will be gradually overcome; but, meantime, there are other sources from which the founders of the gallery are entitled to expect support. The spirited determination displayed at the annual meeting on Thursday night to initiate a movement for the

erection of a new and more suitable homo for the-growing collection of pictures is worthy of encouragement by the Government and the City Council, and it is satisfactory to note that the Mayor has promised his sympathetic aid. The building and equipment of a gallery is an enterprise' that falls very properly to the municipality, while private benefactors might, Trs heretofore, bo trusted to provide the treasures of painting and sculpture. If the Council were to perform its legitimate part, private liberality ivould be stimulated here as it has been elsewhere under similar conditions.

The experience of Birmingham shows what may bo done in this regard. When the civic authorities of the great Midland centre, twenty-two years ago, erected a now Art Gallery out of the profits of the gas department, the Bros. Tangye, who first urged the idea of a proper gallery, contributed £IO,OOO for the purchase of works of art, and the value of the total gifts is estimated at £95,000 for paintings, drawings, and sculpture, and £40,000 for objects of decorative and industrial art. The cost of the building was £BO,OOO, but in the short lapse of time the galleries have become inadequate, and an additional £30,000 is about to be spent upon them, making a gross total of £IIO,OOO. Tho population of Birmingham is 518,000, or about nine times that of Wellington, but we are a richer community, tile ratable value of our property being something like one-fourth of Birmingham’s £2,885,346. It is true that the English city derives a larger proportionate revenue from rents than we do, but, on tho whole, j it is clear that Wellington is capable of supporting the aesthetic interests much more liberally than she has supported them in tho past.