Does the Dunedin Public Art Gallery overlook local talent?
The question was raised by an art student, Shelley McConaughy, who put an installation in the Octagon Shelter commenting ''on the difficulty regional artists had getting their work exhibited in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery'' (ODT. 18.6.14).
The gallery's director, Cam McCracken, replied that ''displaying Otago art was not a 'remit' of the gallery'' and that he tried to get a ''range of art'' on show.
He pointed out there were other local publicly supported venues such as the Community Gallery and the Blue Oyster, the latter focusing on experimental work.
This is an old chestnut but needs re-examining because, clearly, there's a new generation that wonders about it.
The Dunedin Public Art Gallery's brief is encyclopaedic.
It is there to collect and show the art of any people at any time. Remarkably, and without parallel in New Zealand, it owns European paintings from the 14th century, as well as American and Australian cognate works and Asian graphic and sculptural material, including this country's outstanding collection of Japanese woodblock prints - Ukiyo-e.
In these holdings it has a close rival in the Auckland Art Gallery, but the public collections in Christchurch and Wellington are not in the same league.
However, the Auckland gallery draws a line against the so-called ''decorative arts'', while the Dunedin gallery does not. It has metalware, glassware, ceramic and textile holdings and things usually called ''furniture''.
The gallery has been criticised in the past for holding such a wide brief and has often been told it cannot possibly live up to it. But it has persevered for more than a century and the results are nationally impressive. In some areas, they are internationally impressive.
If you take the whole world and the whole of human existence, Otago is a very small part. It wouldn't be so much as 1%.
But if you look at the gallery's holdings, New Zealand and specifically Otago material form a much larger percentage than that. The gallery has not neglected the local, although the feeling that it has is not without foundation.
When Annette Pearse was in charge, from 1946 to 1964, it was felt she neglected New Zealand talents such as Toss Woollaston and Colin McCahon in favour of overseas and long-dead artists.
She certainly collected some of the latter, although few now would consider her acquisitions anything but shrewd investments.
She did not acquire McCahons or Woollastons and, after her time, McCahon's Northland Panels were on long-term loan to the gallery and the failure to acquire them was indeed regrettable.
There would have been assistance for their purchase from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council but instead, after years at Logan Park, they were acquired by the National Art Gallery and are now in Te Papa in Wellington.
But, increasingly, the gallery's collecting and exhibition programme focused on New Zealand. Prominent Otago-resident practitioner Ralph Hotere is only one example of the emphasis given to the local.
Indeed, of legitimate concerns, it is probably not that the balance is against the local, but rather that the demands of touring exhibitions overshadow the claims of the permanent collection.
There has never been any professional expectation that all of the latter can be shown at any one time.
There used to be a feeling that 10% was not a bad quantum to aim at and, late in the 1990s or early last decade, some proportion of the public space was set down, I believe, as either a requirement or a standard to be worked towards. I think it was no less than 40% of the space was to be used for the permanent collection.
There are several factors that make getting a good balance difficult. Few people realise that while the Octagon building is very much larger than the old gallery at Logan Park, its wall area available for public exhibition is about the same.
Most of the additional space is for behind-the-scenes functions, which were woefully provided for at Logan Park.
Another difficulty is that the gallery is expected to function not only as a museum, an institution with its own collection, but as an exhibition centre, a purpose which in many places is catered for separately.
Dunedin is a small city, so doing that here would be difficult, but providing for touring shows does impact on the museum role.
And this has been compounded by the fact that contemporary work is increasingly space hungry. In my lifetime, contemporary work has simply got bigger or anyway requires more space for its exhibition.
It is not that nobody makes small things any more, but the overall enlargement is noticeable.
The gallery is not neglecting the local but I have a local suggestion. It would be good to see Architecture Van Brandenburg's Venice exhibition Unfurling in the Octagon.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
