Monday, September 05, 2016

Move, move, move

It’s spring and thoughts turn to renewal and change. It’s been a while since we looked at the directors of the major public art museums and you do feel there is movement in the air. Jenny Harper has been at the Christchurch Art Gallery for 10 years now and has seen it through some tough times but she must be thinking that now she has a Gold Card, enough is enough. So Christchurch could be up for grabs by the end of the year.

Then there’s the reverberations from the very juicy job that has opened up at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. With Deputy Director Suhanya Raffel off to direct M+ in Hong Kong, a job that will surely attract Rhana Devenport opens up. OK she has only been at the AAG for three years but would she turn down such a major opportunity back in her homeland? The AGNSW is undergoing a mega rebuild and now looks to be a stepping stone to Asia, a region Devenport has shown a strong liking for.

So in the world of supposition, who would fill the Auckland role? Cam McCracken currently at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery is obviously a starter. He’s only been in Dunedin for four years but Dunedin years are a bit longer than Auckland ones, so call it five. Anyway, by now we must be done with having to get Australians to run our country’s most important art museum (#surelytogod).

And let’s not forget smaller institutions with Artspace's director leaving in May next year.

So there’s a lot of potential fun right there especially when you add people like Zara Stanhope, Courtney Johnston, and Blair French into the mix.

OTN caps and large rewards of an indeterminate nature for early news.