The information age

Our art museums have never been ones for announcing ahead of time what they have planned for the year. It’s probably something about their marketing departments wanting to keep an element of surprise, although why making it tricky for out-of-towners to get to see their shows early is hard to fathom.

We’ve noted the City Gallery’s reluctance to part with future exhibition announcements before, but we’ve just found a way to get around their information drip feeding; upcoming exhibitions are only listed up to 16 May 2010 although that's better than the Govett-Brewster manages with a ‘coming soon’ page that is always empty.

Then, via the UK-based The Art Newspaper’s supplement The Year Ahead 2010 we came across listings for the City Gallery up to September 2010. Rather encouraged by this we used that information in the City Gallery’s web site search box and found even more future-info hidden away in a City Gallery Education Programme poster – you can download it here.

So here you go:

19 February – 12 September We are here and there (City art collection)

3 April – 13 June Leilani Kake (video)

29 May – 12 September Crown Lynn: Crockery of distinction

29 May – 12 September John Pule

25 June – 8 August Lauren Lysaght

28 August – 6 September Hiapo: Contemporary conversations with Cerisse Palalagi

Before all this, and during Wellington’s International Festival, the City Gallery is showing (20 February – 16 May) the Gus Fisher’s Milan Mrkusich exhibition, Christchurch Gallery’s Seraphine Pick survey and Janet Cardiff’s 2001 soundscape The Forty Part Motet which you can sneak preview here.