Honorary doctorate for influential art historian
A man who revolutionised the way New Zealanders look
at their art is to receive an honorary doctorate from
Victoria University.
Artist and art historian Gordon H.
Brown will receive an honorary Doctor of Literature that
will be conferred at the University’s graduation ceremonies
in December this year.
Born in Wellington in 1931, Mr
Brown is one of the key figures of 20th Century New Zealand
art history and criticism, receiving both national and
international distinction. He was among the first to assess
New Zealand painting and other visual media in line with
international practice.
While regarded as an authority on
New Zealand’s fine and applied art, he is also well
acquainted with New Zealand literature and is now gaining
recognition for his own contribution to the development of
modernism in New Zealand.
A graduate of the Canterbury
College of Art in Christchurch, he trained as a librarian at
the National Library School and joined the Alexander
Turnbull Library in 1960. In 1964, he became librarian at
Elam School of Art before joining the Auckland City Art
Gallery in 1965.
He was curator of the picture collection
at the Hocken Library in Dunedin from 1971 to 1974 during
which time he became close friends with Colin McCahon, James
K. Baxter, J.C. Sturm and Don Driver.
As a result of his
own collecting, he became a steady donor of work by McCahon
and other emerging New Zealand artists to art museums
throughout New Zealand. He contributed 50 items to the first
50 issues of the quarterly journal Art in New Zealand.
In
1969, he co-authored the first comprehensive history of New
Zealand painting with Hamish Keith. The book has been
reprinted several times and was revised and enlarged in
1982. In 1972, the first of a trilogy of exhibitions
surveying the history of New Zealand painting from 1900 to
1960 appeared and the three publications that accompanied
them represent the most comprehensive writing on this topic.
Mr Brown became director of the Waikato Art Gallery in
1970 and later the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui in 1974.
Since 1977, he has worked free-lance as a writer and
researcher and in 1989 received an OBE for his contribution
to New Zealand art history and scholarship.
Now aged 71,
Mr Brown, who lives on Auckland’s Waiheke Island, continues
to work tirelessly to ensure the record of Colin McCahon’s
work is complete and accurate, to give occasional lectures,
and to revise and enlarge the trilogy he worked on during
the 1970s to bring it up to 1985.
Victoria University
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stuart McCutcheon, said Mr Brown
was keen to help the students of the future. “Victoria
University is delighted to acknowledge Gordon Brown’s
contribution to the arts in New Zealand, both as an
historian and critic and as an artist.”
Issued by
Victoria University of Wellington Public Affairs
For
further information please contact Antony Paltridge or phone
+64-4-463-5873