Auckland Art Gallery

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
The gallery building, showing the clock tower
Former names	Auckland City Art Gallery
General information
Type	Art gallery, formerly public library and council offices
Architectural style	French Renaissance
Location	Corner Wellesley and Kitchener Streets, Auckland City
Coordinates	36°51′05″S 174°45′59″E / 36.8514°S 174.7663°E / -36.8514; 174.7663Coordinates: 36°51′05″S 174°45′59″E / 36.8514°S 174.7663°E / -36.8514; 174.7663
Completed	1887
Design and construction
Architect	Grainger & Charles D'Ebro (1887), FJMT + Archimedia (2011)
Awards and prizes	2013 World Building of the Year, World Architecture Festival

Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is the principal public gallery in Auckland, New Zealand, and has the most extensive collection of national and international art in New Zealand. It frequently hosts travelling international exhibitions.

Set below the hilltop Albert Park in the central-city area of Auckland, the gallery was established in 1888 as the first permanent art gallery in New Zealand.

The building originally housed the Auckland Art Gallery as well as the Auckland public library opening with collections donated by benefactors Governor Sir George Grey and James Tannock Mackelvie. This was the second public art gallery in New Zealand opened three years after the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1884. Wellington’s New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts opened in 1892 and a Wellington Public Library in 1893. Christchurch’s Robert McDougall Art Gallery opened in 1932, and was superseded by a spectacular Christchurch Art Gallery in 2003.

Many other cities and towns built public libraries and a few boasted public art galleries, including Nelson’s Suter Art Gallery (1899), Whanganui’s Sarjeant Gallery (1919) and New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewster Art Gallery (1970).

Throughout the 1870s many people in Auckland felt the city needed a municipal art collection but the newly established Auckland City Council was unwilling to commit funds to such a project. Following pressure by such eminent people as Sir Maurice O'Rorke (Speaker of the House of Representatives) and others, the building of a combined Art Gallery & Library was made necessary by the promise of significant bequests from two major benefactors; former colonial governor Sir George Grey, and James Tannock Mackelvie. Grey had promised books for a municipal library as early as 1872 and eventually donated large numbers of manuscripts, rare books and paintings from his collection to the Auckland Gallery & Library [in all over 12,500 items, including 53 paintings]. He also gave material to Cape Town, where he had also been governor. The Grey bequest includes works by Caspar Netscher, Henry Fuseli, William Blake and David Wilkie.