Cross Currents exhibition invitation and leaflet, 1991.
A closer working relationship between the Centre for Contemporary Art (CFCA hereafter) and Waikato Museum of Art and History Te Whare Taonga o Waikato (Waikato Museum hereafter) started immediately in 1984. Here we recall some of the many projects.
Working together was always a lively, optimistic, enjoyable process energised by urgency, intense discussion, global research, chutzpah, stake-holder and public consultation. Guidance from the Māori queen Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the Waikato Museum koroua Waiau Mauriohooho and the Tainui Māori Trust Board was essential to the process.
The process required reconceptualising how a bi-cultural public museum partnered with the CFCA and others, could deliver effective heritage and bi-cultural services post-1980s for what was clearly going to be a new and rich bi-cultural age in New Zealand Aotearoa.
Given the shared target audience and the benefits of working together, CFCA and Waikato Museum developed joint marketing strategies that included domestic and international cultural tourism sectors. Chartwell commercial interests in the tourism-based businesses ‘Rainbow Springs Nature Park’ in Rotorua, ‘Shotover Jet’ in Queenstown and the ‘Christchurch Tram’ were valuable sources of professional marketing experience.
Chartwell and the Waikato museum recognised heritage and culture public venues are in the tourism business so these successful businesses were often discussed and visited by Chartwells Rob Gardiner and Waikato Museum Director Bruce Robinson. It was invaluable to talk with their marketing staff to learn how the CFCA and Waikato Museum could broaden and style their domestic and international tourism strategies.
These strategies sought to capitalise on the good geographical location of Hamilton as the gateway to Auckland, Waikato, Coromandel, Waitomo, Rotorua and burgeoning Raglan. This focus led to an enormous increase in domestic & international tourism to Hamilton giving CFCA and Waikato Museum some of the highest art gallery & museum attendance rates in NZ. Needless to say small private businesses in the Victoria South precinct were thrilled as the area boomed.
Chartwell and Waikato Museum believed NZ cultural institutions, Tainui Māori heritage & culture, the nation's culture, New Zealand and Australian Art should be presented internationally. At the time Chartwell and Waikato Museum were the only NZ cultural institutions to consistently profile their exhibitions and write articles for publication in The Arts Newspaper International Edition based in London & New York and benefit from their immense global distribution. Perhaps vainly we hoped to encourage them to open a permanent Pacific, Australasia and Asia bureau to balance their Global North bias.
In the late 1980s Chartwell offered their entire collection of contemporary New Zealand and Australian Art including future acquisitions on long-term loan to the Waikato Museum.
There had never been such a large transfer of cultural heritage, let alone Trans Tasman cultural heritage, between a New Zealand public art gallery or museum and a private art collecting entity in the Nation’s history. The loan agreement was unique, taking on a significance of its own as the go-to document for future loans of private cultural property to an NZ cultural institution. It was subsequently used when Waikato Museum negotiated a long-term loan of the Wellington-based Jim & Mary Barr Collection of contemporary New Zealand art. Ironically the same loan agreement was used when Jim and Mary Barr removed their collection from the Waikato Museum in 1996 and placed it on loan to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and again, when Chartwell withdrew their collection from the Waikato Museum in 1997 and placed it on long term loan to the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
The 1991 Waikato Museum exhibition ‘Cross Currents: contemporary New Zealand and Australian Art from the Chartwell Collection celebrated this extraordinary gesture of civic cultural patronage. Curated by Waikato Museum art curator Linda Tyler and Ken Orchard the exhibition was accompanied by a significant catalogue, funded by Chartwell, an enduring testimony of this great moment for Hamilton City and the bond between Chartwell and Waikato Museum.
The Chartwell Trust made a generous annual donation for book purchases for the Waikato Museum public access library and research centre. This enabled the Waikato Museum to engage a full-time professional librarian, greatly enhancing the capacities of curatorial staff in both the CFCA and Waikato Museum and in the delivery of services to the public.
The depth of the operational relationship between Chartwell and Waikato Museum was marvellously demonstrated in 1994/95 when the NZ Lottery Environment and Heritage Committee Te Tahua Taiao NgāTaonga unanimously approved a joint Waikato Museum & Chartwell application for full funding to digitalise the documents and records and photograph the combined Waikato Museum & Chartwell collections to put them online for public access and curatorial use. The application to the NZ Lottery would not have been possible without Chartwell. Indeed the Lottery committee praised the potency of the organisational and financial partnership between Chartwell and Waikato Museum and endorsement of the Tainui Māori Trust Board.
The Chartwell Waikato Museum partnership drew in many people and organisations beyond CFCA and Waikato Museum staff. New Zealand and Australian artists, writers, directors, arts administrators, academics, dealers, and collectors were visitors to Hamiltion. And there were projects with the Hamilton-based University of Waikato Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato.
There was an enduring relationship between Chartwell, the Waikato Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, MCA, Sydney which included senior level staff migrations across the Tasman. Rob Gardiner and Bruce Robinson visited artists, crafts people, galleries, museums, art collectors, dealers and arts institutions throughout Australia where the Chartwell Collection and its extensive cultural activities were better known than in NZ and highly respected, as they still are today.
July 2024
Bruce M. Robinson was Director of the Waikato Museum of Art and History Te Whare Taonga o Waikato from 1984 -1995
