Without actually intending to, Hamish Keith has done almost everything there is to do in the arts. In 1958 he started work as a student assistant at the Auckland Art Gallery and 60 years later is now self-employed as a cultural curmudgeon and cultural odd job man. In the bits in between he has written a couple of histories of New Zealand art, stood for parliament, made television documentaries, been a television arts reporter, radio interviewer, written television drama and television criticism, written DIY books on separation and divorce, been National President of Actors Equity, Chair of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, newspaper columnist, restaurant critic, Chair of the National Gallery, led the ill-fated Heart of the Nation cultural review and done lots of other stuff best forgotten.
Hamish Keith
Auckland’s heritage suffers the death of a thousand careless cuts
Heritage houses in Auckland continue to be demolished, despite a promise from Len Brown. [more]
John Key’s insightful cultural comment up there with George W Bush
History is not on the Prime Minister’s side when it comes to the All Blacks vs... [more]
Ralph Hotere deserves Order of New Zealand
Considering the role the visual arts have played in shaping our and the world’s view of these skinny islands since someone handy with a pen bumped into them in 1642, we have been remarkably stingy in recognising its practitioners. In all that time, we have honoured them with three knighthoods,... [more]
Hamish Keith on museums
A disclosure: I chair a working party of a bunch of museum professionals, with an eminent architect thrown in, who are making a case for exhibition space on the Auckland waterfront for the national collections.
Other than to note that there is ample precedent for that – Britain’s Tate has four... [more]
ArtBox project a good idea
At the end of October, with a well- deserved ra-ra, Christchurch restored shopping therapy to its munted CBD with an ingenious collection of shops in Cashel Mall constructed from containers. The only dissenting voice was a pusillanimous Brit who claimed to have invented container shopping malls and threatened to sue.
Given... [more]
Boast and waffle
A Cultural Curmudgeon's eye view of the main parties' arts policies. [more]
Creative New Zealand’s Venice selection
Conventional wisdom puts the world’s population of New Zealanders at five million with about four million of them living at home. Those who are absent turn up in the most surprising occupations and countries. It should be a matter of pride that so many who were born here enrich the... [more]
Map of the cultural heart
A Ministry for Culture and Heritage map by Jason Smith is a rational tool for cultural planning. [more]
Auckland Art Gallery review
It is an inevitable subtext to the life of a curmudgeon that things are never as good as they used to be. Annoyingly, very occasionally, things do not turn out as neatly as that. Sometimes things are not as good as they once were because they are a great deal... [more]
Auckland urban design right for a change
The Wynyard Quarter is a genuinely public place, thank goodness. [more]
Gap Filler scheme a success in Christchurch
The brilliant Gap Filler scheme is a simple idea and a dashing metaphor for cultural recovery in Christchurch. [more]
The fish hooks of Wai 262
Wai 262 might turn out to have more lethal fish hooks than te waka a Maui. [more]
RWC’s kitsch parade
[caption id="attachment_25224" align="alignright" width="192" caption="Natalie Stamilla with her Michael Jones sculpture"][/caption]
Into each town some kitsch must fall. A sad fact of public art. A clumsy word is kitsch. We may not know much about art, but we should know corn when we see it: mock heroism, counterfeit emotions, muddled classical... [more]
Fairfield College “artists” had something to say
When the seventh formers of Fairfield College, Hamilton, armed with buckets of weed killer, scampered around their school grounds one weekend in 2009, decorating it with giant phalluses, they had no idea they were adding to a small but select collection of terrestrial glyphs. A passing Google satellite added their... [more]
Creative New Zealand: beureaucratic bum-covering
Down the rabbit hole of funding application forms. [more]
Team Auckland Art Gallery
If the Government can spare $36 million for the America’s Cup, how about $14 million more for this showcase? [more]
Lessons from the Barbican
It was inevitable that, sooner or later in any intelligent discussion of cultural recovery for Christchurch, London’s Barbican Centre would raise its brutish head. More than once voted London’s ugliest building, this towering monument to British brutalism is both a model and a warning. A massive performing arts centre –... [more]