NEW ZEALAND ART

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 June 1939, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND ART

A CENTENNIAL FEATURE. EXHIBITION TO TOUR DOMINION. The Government is taking advantage of the opportunity the Centennial year will afford to plan an exhibition of New Zealand art which will range from the work of the earliest surveyors and artists, who visited New Zealand before white settlement, up to and including that of the present day. The Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon W. E. Parry, stated recently that the exhibition would form a complete visual survey of New Zealand art. Many of the early drawings and paintings, he said, were to be found in our art galleries and museums and in private collections, and the intention was to bring them together’ to make a special feature of the proposed exhibition. Commencing with thos: early works, a complete survey of the first hundred years of art in New Zealand was being planned and, consequently, the exhibition would consist not only of paintings but also of drawings, etchings, lithographs, caricatures, cartoons, book illustrations, and sculpture. COMPREHENSIVE ITINERARY. It was not intended that the exhibition should be confined to one centra but that it should be displayed in th: main centres and towns of the Dominion. A well-produced catalogue, complete with biographical notes and illustrations, would be compiled and his would afford a valuable historical .■ecord of New Zealand art. The Minister stated that the Government contemplated setting up a National Committee to control the venture and to secure the active cojperation of the various art bodies throughout the Dominion. He als. hoped that private collectors would come forward and lend their art treasures and thus make this exhibition ihe most memorable in the history of New Zealand art.