The story
Opened in 1888, this was the first permanent art gallery in New Zealand, sharing its Victorian building with the city library and starting from gifts by the colonial governor George Grey and the Scottish merchant James Mackelvie.
What draws many visitors are the portraits of Māori men and women painted around the turn of the 20th century by two very different hands. Gottfried Lindauer, a Bohemian immigrant, and Charles Goldie, an Aucklander, each painted named individuals rather than anonymous types, so the pictures work as records of specific ancestors, tūpuna, many of them respected leaders. They are held and shown today in consultation with the descendants of the people portrayed.
The gallery holds the largest art collection in the country, and in a 2011 rebuild the architects added a canopy of kauri wood over the entrance, the same native timber the early city was largely built from.
