Clocked

‘All collections are political’. That was the American artist Fred Wilson in his exhibition Mining the museum. More contentiously, ‘Possessiveness, when it appears as a symptom, is always a secondary phenomenon of anxiety.’ That was the English psychoanalyst D W Winnicott. These thoughts are here to introduce you to a couple of startling exhibitions on the business of collecting. The first is The Keeper, curated by Massimiliano Gioni, which has just opened in New York at the New Museum. At its center is Ydessa Hendeles’s Teddy Bear project (more Teddys than you could possibly imagine). We once saw it installed alongside another artwork from her collection (not a teddy bear this time), Maurizio Cattelan’s Him, a miniature figure of Hitler at prayer. The New York Times took the opportunity offered by The Keeper to ask its readers what they collect. The responses are here including one guy who collects photographs of men in lines. And this brings us to the second exhibition and one of our favourite collectors, the artist Patrick Pound. He is showing his work Documentary Intersect at the Adam Art Gallery, opening tonight. A highlight of the show is a set of around 30 postcards of the same floral clock that Pound has patiently assembled over the years. Incredibly, each card is in fact a different photograph of the same clock and, even more remarkably, each one shows a different time. Eat your heart out Christian Marclay.

Image Pat Pound installing his exhibition at the Adam art Gallery

We’ve seen the future and it ends in mid June

Given the extended lead-times exhibitions need these days (permissions, condition reporting, crating, lending institutional requirements etc etc) you'd think most art museums could let us know what they'll be showing up to at least 2020, but no. Trying to find out what’s coming up for even this year is something of a challenge. OK, Christchurch and the Govett-Brewster have troubles of their own so let them be, but the only way we could find out what the Auckland Art Gallery is planning for the year (or the beginning of it anyway) was to check their events calendar off month by month. Most museums internationally now have extended Future Exhibitions sections to encourage out of town visitor planning which kind of makes sense. Anyway back home the winner in the what’s-going-on competition is the Adam Art Gallery. Its exhibitions are listed up to February next year.

So to save you website humiliation and frustrations here is what we found stacked up on offer for 2014.

Auckland Art Gallery up to end July (Go to ‘Event search’ and work through month by month)
Five Maori Painters
My country: Contemporary art from black Australia
(Guess we could add the biennial Walters Prize)

Dowse Art Museum up to mid June
Shapeshifter 2014
Everyday fiction
See like your hero which “includes work by Gordon Walters, Colin McCahon, Ralph Hotere, Don Driver and Saskia Leek. “ #gosaskia

City Gallery up to mid May 
Simon Starling: In speculum

Adam Art Gallery up to February 2015
Cinema & painting
Kim Pieters
Simon Denny: the personal effects of Kim Dotcom

Te Papa up to end of June
Throne of Emperors and Shi Lu: a revolution in paint (both from the National Museum of China)

Dunedin Public Art Gallery to the end of March 2014
Speed and colour: British lino cuts from the 1930s


It’s shaping up to be quite a year.

Our promise to you

Who wants to develop “an understanding and appreciation of art’s complex role in reflecting and affecting how people relate critically and creatively to a changing world”?

Who feels their role is to “to act as a forum for change” ?

Who believes “The collection is fundamental to the Gallery’s exhibition programme”?

Who are convinced that they have placed their city and New Zealand “firmly on the international cultural map”

Who claims to be the “the home of the visual arts in New Zealand”?

Whose “guiding ethos follows a transparency of ideas in the production and communications of exhibitions and in developing content for public fruition”?

Who intends to find “synergies between the global and local"?

Who knows that “good art can make an immediate and important impact”?

Who has “unswervingly followed a path of presenting leading edge contemporary art”?

Answers here