Mark Southcombe reviews Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery: A Whanganui biography by Martin Edmond for Architecture New Zealand:
‘Whanganui is close to my heart. Like Martin Edmond, I grew up nearby and visited regularly. I also practised architecture there for many years and have a close involvement in the arts community and the Sarjeant Gallery. So, Martin Edmond’s Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery: A Whanganui Biography was welcomed and immediately familiar.
The book is an ambitious rereading and reweaving together of a wide range of key historical, arts and community sources to create a new narrative. Many well-known histories and artist stories are combined with beautiful images from the collection, and stories from and of the artworks. The works become actors in this story and the collection is brought to life. These stories of art and artists are also contextualised by comparison with wider local and international events. They are further illuminated with stories of the key people important to the Sarjeant’s life. Together, these woven threads help develop deeper understandings of key players and moments, and the significance of each to the life of the gallery. Initially, this seems a little strange because we don’t expect a biographic reading of a gallery. On reflection, we find it’s not a history of a building that we are reading. It’s a biography: a history of the gallery’s life. This was part of the original intention when the book was commissioned and is prescient of the book’s palpable strength. The life of a building is way more than its history. There are many histories of Whanganui already and Chris Cochran has written a very fine history of the Sarjeant Gallery’s architecture and how it came to be.
The gallery biography is structured by time and tracks through the Sarjeant’s chronology, which is also listed as a table in the appendices. It begins with the history of the land and establishment of the city, and the settler wealth associated with land acquisition and accumulation. These are the roots of the building grafted as layers onto Pukenamu, the gallery site and strategic hill location, occupied as a fighting pā and later by the Rutland Stockade during the contested period of European settlement. Stories around the growth of the city and its arts community, and the Sarjeant bequest and realisation, follow. Chapters cover the original architectural competition, building design process and eventual construction during the First World War, and the parts played by key players, including architects and patrons. An international-standard, pared-back neoclassical gallery is the architectural legacy that resulted. The pivotal political role of Mayor Charles Mackay, and his subsequent entrapment and dramatic fall from grace, and the associated implications for the local arts community, weave through the next chapter with lucid commentary on the collection and its gradual assembly. The narrative tracks through the conservative machinations of the city at one point in its early history, astutely reflecting on the political opposition the arts faced. Polarised local politics were also exploited by another mayor, Michael Laws, in a later generation. Edmond reflects on hyper-masculinity; sport was seen as masculine even when engaged in by women, and the arts feminine even, or especially, when engaged in by men.
There are too many extraordinary people in this story to name in a review, especially the notable artists and New Zealand arts personalities represented in the book and Sarjeant collection but there are two key people we must mention. The first professional director, Gordon Brown, delivered policy that brought the gallery and its collection into the 20th century. The astute curatorial eye and gentle, collaborative leadership of his successor, Bill Milbank, developed lifelong relationships between key artists and the gallery. Bill Milbank’s inclusive nature also opened the gallery as a safe space for Māori artists to exhibit, and he carefully accumulated what has become a nationally significant permanent collection.
The chapter about the long gestation of the extension, and its competition and realisation, omits some key events in the life of the gallery and that of Whanganui’s arts community. As I write this, the extension project is not yet complete. The book emerged through Covid times and relied significantly on online material, particularly the Vernon Systems database of the Sarjeant collection. The gallery as key player in this biography is still very much alive and it’s the nature of biographies for each to be a thread in a larger narrative.
Martin Edmond’s Te Whare o Rehua Sarjeant Gallery: A Whanganui Biography is well researched and often engaging. Don’t be fooled. This is more than a local story. It is an excellent case study, and an often-insightful commentary on Aotearoa New Zealand’s development of an arts culture. Its biographic narrative is refreshing, integrating the settings and cultural milieu of a gallery’s life, major events and milestones, people and works from the past, and people and works that continue to give the gallery its life.
Long live the Sarjeant!’
