Lindauer Portraits on Show in San Francisco

Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, is touring 31 portraits of Maori by the famed artist Gottfried Lindauer, which will be on display at San Francisco’s de Young Fine Arts Museum through to April next year.

Auckland Art Gallery director Rhana Devenport said it was the first time there has been a major exhibition of Maori portraits in the United States.

“It’s a perfect home for the collection, the museum already has some beautiful taonga from New Zealand and also it’s a spectacular museum and very highly respected.”

She said some of the works had been to the US before.

“A very small number of works were sent over in the early 1900s to the St Louis World Fair and they won the award for the best exhibits at that fair, so it’s fitting more people will be able to see the larger collection,” Devenport said.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco director Max Hollein asked for the collection to be shown in San Francisco, and said the gallery was honoured to share the paintings.

“This unique exhibition not only presents the astonishing oeuvre of Lindauer but also addresses the complexities of what a painting is and can be.

“We appreciate that for Maori these paintings are living connections to the past and are conduits for remembering and sharing the remarkable life stories of their ancestors,” Hollein said.

An exhibition of the Lindauer works in the Auckland Art Gallery, which closed in February this year was visited by nearly 100,000 people.

Original article by Radio New Zealand, September 9, 2017.