Tairawhiti Landscapes

A regional museum and art gallery provides three basic functions for the community it serves: development and care of collections, exhibitions and education programmes. In earlier times many of our museums were able to display most of the specimens, objects and art works that they had collected.

However as museum collections continue to grow, an increasing proportion of the collections are kept in storage. Objects and art works confined to storage are accessible to researchers and others who have a particular interest in or relationship with them, but museum trustees and staff are increasingly conscious of the need to make these collections more accessible to the public through exhibitions and other public programmes.

In 2009 a selection of art works from the museum’s collection was displayed and discussed in the winter lectures. Some of those attending the lectures said that they were not aware that the museum had such an interesting collection of art works. Museum staff made a commitment at that time to create exhibitions that would make the museum’s art collections more accessible. Many of the art works discussed during the lecture series were landscapes painted by local artists and it seemed logical to begin the series of collection based exhibitions with Tairāwhiti Landscapes.

Tairāwhiti Landscapes is a selection of forty paintings and prints from the museum collection including works by Noman Scott, Phyllis Underdown, Sandy Adsett, Peter Ireland, Juliet Bowen, Richard Rogers, Brian Campbell and John Walsh. The works of these and other artists in the exhibition emphasise the richness and diversity of artistic endeavour in this region. Without the generosity of those who have gifted many of the works to the museum collection this resource would not be available to the community.

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