Resort's art scene a welcome surprise

Washington Post readers have been told they can ''zipline, kayak, skydive, bungy and bike through scenery as otherworldly as it looks in such movies as The Hobbit, which was filmed here'' in Queenstown, but the big expose is its art scene.

New York-based travel writer Michael Kaminer, who said his idea of thrill-seeking involved a new book and a double espresso, found himself in the resort for five days thanks to ''a planning mix-up'' at the expense of time in cities he wanted to explore.

He attempted to find non-gravity defying activities but despaired of ''a place whose entire economy seems engineered to serve adrenaline junkies'', until his hotel manager introduced him to artist Alice Blackley and her Art Adventures tour, which took him to art venues including the Nadene Milne Gallery in Arrowtown.

''Nadene Milne Gallery, as I learned, is one of [Damien] Hirst's global representatives. And the exhibit, tantalisingly titled The Beauty and Brutality of Fact, provided my first glimpse of a Queenstown that rarely makes the radar of adventure-craving tourists - a happening, heterogeneous art scene that's uniquely New Zealand in its blend of hip and homey.''

His article published last week, headlined ''In Queenstown, New Zealand, art is an adventure, too'', goes on to tell Washington DC citizens of his visit to ''the tidy gallery of Tim Wilson, whose hyper-realistic fantasy landscapes got snapped up by The Hobbit cast members during their long shoot here''.

Mr Kaminer wrote about Milford Galleries Queenstown and its ''just-opened exhibit by one of New Zealand's great living artists, Dick Frizzell''.

He checks out ''quirky gallery'' Kapa to see prints by Weston Frizzell, then the tour stops by artists Spike and Sue Wademan at work.

Despite wrongly describing Queenstown as a ''city whose year-round population tops out at around 9000'', Mr Kaminer ended his report by leaving the resort ''with a new perspective on a destination I'd pretty much written off''.