'Chartwell Collection Signing' in Scene, pg 28, March 10 1997.
On 28 February 1997, the Chartwell Collection was placed on long-term loan to the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, after a decision by the Chartwell Trust to move its collection north from its home in Hamilton. I can vividly recall the occasion when, together with the Art Gallery Enterprise Board Chair, I sat alongside Trust Chair, Rob Gardiner, and the Mayor of Auckland, Les Mills, to witness the signing of the Deed of Agreement. That day was undoubtedly an historic one for the Gallery.
At the time, the Chartwell loan comprised nearly 500 works, which immediately expanded the representative reach and elevated the quality of the Gallery’s contemporary New Zealand and Australian art holdings. It was, I thought at the time, a deeply civic-minded gesture, not unlike that of the Mackelvie Trust more than a century ago, which permanently long-loaned part of its magnificent historical collection to the Gallery, together with the Auckland War Memorial Museum, when it was bequeathed to the people of Auckland in 1885.
I should say that the Council did rise to meet the challenge of this new influx of works and funded the conversion of an underground car-parking space in a Council building to be fitted-out as a new storage facility. This both greatly relieved the current storage challenges confronting the Gallery (has it not ever been thus?) while comfortably housing the Chartwell Collection. So, not only did Chartwell furnish the Gallery with a magnificent new addition to its holdings, a direct consequence of their doing so was that enabled it to leverage new art storage.
Rob and the Chartwell Trustees were tremendously generous in supporting the Gallery in whatever way they could to take on this new responsibility. More than that, the Chartwell Trust has never stopped adding to the collection, and nor has it ever faltered in its enduring support of the Gallery in incalculable other ways. Auckland is very fortunate to be the principal beneficiary of the Chartwell Trust’s remarkable and farsighted vision – which has, in fact, become the agent of contemporary cultural change they so wanted it to be from the beginning.
Chris Saines CNZM was the Director at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki from 1996-2013.
