TGIF

Another week speeds by and to mark the end of it and the start of the weekend, joined other members of the Never 2 Old YMCA fitness group on a jaunt after the gym to the Art Gallery .  We walked down down Greys Avenue in the wanish  winter sunlight  and partook of a great flat white and a delicious  rhubarb and apple muffin at the Gallery cafe, before joining a public tour of the gallery with a knowledgable and enthusiastic guide,  Sally.  It was a great experience even although I have visited the gallery several times since its refurbishment.  The really old part was once the Auckland Public Library  which opened in 1887,  and where I started my library career in December 1966.  Now it is two magnificent galleries with old and new paintings in them.   Sally pointed out one or two key paintings in all the various galleries - the Victorian paintings,  the early NZ paintings, the Goldie and Lindauer portraits, the well-known Rita Angas portrait of Betty Curnow, the Frances Hodgkins works, Colin McCahon paintings and contemporary NZ art.

Gazed in wonderment at the  Flower Chandelier by Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa, an installation commissioned for the gallery's reopening.  He also did another installation  entitled Red, red plastic flowers on a branch floating in a pond of water outside the gallery.   That was taken down this week and a new sculpture  by a Tongan artist was installed there today.  They were selling the red plastic flowers in the Gallery shop and I bought a couple.  Sally told us that the Flower Chandelier will probably leave the gallery too at the end of the year to be replaced with something else so will be visiting more often from now on while it is still here.