The selection and presentation culture of the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1932-2002
2012
Crighton, Anna Louisa de Launey
This thesis presents an analytical framework for studying the evolution of museological culture in a post-colonial context and then applies that framework to the case of the Christchurch public art gallery, the Robert McDougall Art Gallery (RMAG), over its 70-year lifespan (1932–2002). Primarily, this requires addressing the history of the institution at crucial moments, which in turn has involved striking a satisfactory balance between this and selection and presentation cultures.
It uses a ‘binocular’ approach to look through the ‘lenses’ of both the selection and the presentation of the gallery’s collection and exhibition of art works. The first lens is concerned with the attitudes, values and symbols associated with the selection of art works for the permanent collection and temporary exhibitions. The second lens is concerned with the attitudes, values and symbols associated with the presentation of these art works to the public, including the ways in which the design and size of the gallery created presentational opportunities and constraints that were an important part of the cultural legacy inherited by each generation of the gallery’s staff to 2002.
To help analyse and explain these selection and presentation cultures, the thesis includes, first, the concept of core museological functions. Second, it deals with the ‘civic culture’, which includes the attitude of benign neglect displayed by the Christchurch City Council (CCC), and at the same time the attitude of civic pride and obligation displayed by the citizens of Christchurch who gave funds and art works to the gallery. Third, the post-colonial tensions of specifically indigenous, transplanted and autochthonous artistic and presentational styles are discussed. Styles are defined according to whether they are: indigenous, that is, traditional and modern Maori styles; traditional and modern styles transplanted to New Zealand from Britain or other countries; or autochthonous, that is, styles developed in New Zealand since its colonisation and not derived from transplanted or Maori styles – whether traditional or modern.
The thesis uses this conceptual approach to argue that the evolution of the RMAG’s museological culture went through three key phases. Part One, ‘The Pro Forma Civic Culture’, consists of three chapters that explore the influence of the civic culture and focus on the political leadership role of the Christchurch City Council from its inception in 1862 through to 1970. As the title implies, ‘Beginnings: a culture of benign neglect’, traces the beginnings of the civic culture and the development of what became the RMAG. Chapter 2, ‘New influences on the culture, establishment of the collection and first permanent staff’, considers the establishment and presentation of the collection in the light of more recent museological practice, revealing the tensions between the influence of the first permanent curator and director and a controlling city council. Their respective influences are further examined in the third chapter, ‘Gathering momentum: the turning point’, which covers the 1950s and 1960s, when New Zealand art was taking decisive steps toward a home-grown identity.
Part Two, ‘The Culture in Transition’, also contains three chapters covering the years from the late 1960s through to the mid-1980s. In this period the civic culture altered its stance from one of benign neglect to unprecedented levels of funding. These decades, too, saw a shift to modern transplanted (Western) values and attitudes, including greater professionalism. Chapter 4, ‘An educational perspective’, looks at this new direction in the evolution of the RMAG, which exercised a huge influence on the selection culture. The following chapter, ‘Professionalising and globalising the culture’, documents a dramatic move towards appreciable professionalism – a truly modern, transplanted mode of selection and presentation rather than an ad hoc or concerted attempt to introduce autochthonous or indigenous elements. From the 1970s it was also the era of the international ‘blockbuster’ shows, which attracted unprecedented numbers of visitors to the gallery. The last chapter of this section, ‘The transition in attitudes to Maori art’, addresses the question of cultural indigenous autonomy and the beginning of the end of ignoring Maori art in art galleries; it considers how the Te Maori exhibition began to change attitudes in the late 1980s.
The last part, ‘The Final Decades – New Tendencies and Old Legacies’, covers the final period of the RMAG’s selection and presentation culture until the permanent closing of its doors on its seventieth birthday, 16 June 2002. The two chapters in this section cover ‘The selection culture in the 1980s and 1990s’ and ‘Presentational challenges and responses in the 1980s and 1990s’. The former addresses a move from a perceived elitist to a populist culture through the introduction of several popular exhibitions and the continuation of the blockbuster shows, partly as a result of city council demand for higher attendances to minimise the visitor/cost ratio as well as to boost the local economy. It also introduces an overt commitment on the part of the gallery to biculturalism. The final chapter considers the change in balance from the selection culture predominant in Parts One and Two towards the significant dilemma of the imposed constraints on the presentation culture which a gallery of severely limited size could reasonably be expect to house. The innovative and varied responses finally led to the opening of a new gallery.
An epilogue highlights and compares the attitudes, values and symbols of the original design of the 1932 art gallery building with the new Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu opened in 2003. A surprisingly complex network of sub-themes is discernible when the two structures are contrasted.
The influences on and the cultural evolution of the gallery are based upon primary research in historical archives and through interviews with former staff of the gallery and artists, and various secondary sources relating to the Robert McDougall Art Gallery, other New Zealand public art galleries and international trends in museological culture.