Fits right in: Te Papa's Warhol: Immortal reinforces the museum's 'kooky' vibe.Credit: Maarten Holl
New Zealand's Te Papa is playing exclusive Australasian host to a new Warhol exhibition, writes Julietta Jameson.
Since opening in 1998, Wellington's Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, has, as senior art curator Sarah Farrar says, "succeeded in creating a whole new generation of museum-goers".
A visit to the striking waterfront monolith during school holidays is a stark illustration of its appeal. It teems with kids who flock to see its kooky - some might say lowbrow - exhibitions and activities.
One NZ art critic called the place and its populist approach "the cultural equivalent to a fast-food outlet".
If Andy Warhol were alive today, he would probably love Te Papa for all those things, because Warhol himself paddled in the same popular pool.
The father of the pop-art movement might also love that Te Papa is a contradiction, displaying its collection of significant art and artefacts right next to such things as the recently closed Game Masters, a collection dedicated to video and online games.
Warhol's work is next to be displayed in the museum. And the new exhibition, Warhol: Immortal, has been cooked up specifically for Te Papa, a collaboration between the Andy Warhol Museum in his home town of Pittsburgh and Te Papa's Farrar.
Excitingly for Te Papa, it will be a regional exclusive. "He was without a doubt one of the 20th century's greatest artists," Farrar says.
"The appeal of this exhibition, whether in New Zealand or anywhere else in the world, is that it is a great chance to see work by a great artist."
Also, Farrar says, Warhol's obsession with fame and public life makes him highly relevant today. "He prefigured a lot of the issues we face: the development of social media, the proliferation of the internet and what that's done in terms of access and networking. And how we now live public lives. He was exploring that."
The Andy Warhol Museum and Farrar have created an exhibition that traces Warhol's life, from early drawings that inform his boyhood and art-school days in the 1940s and 1950s, to pieces that speak of his enormous fame in the '60s and '70s (including films that will be screened in the museum's cinema), through to a two-metre-square self-portrait painted the year before his death in 1987.
"Warhol was particularly aware of his own mortality," Farrar says, "particularly after he was shot and survived it [in a 1968 murder attempt]. When you look at this portrait, this is an artist who is very mature, and in looking out at you he seems fragile and vulnerable yet larger than life. It's an interesting contradiction, and contradiction runs throughout his work."
Te Papa has a fresh exhibition of its significant Australian Aboriginal art holdings. It's part of the relaunch of the museum's level-five arts program.
Te Papa's collection of contemporary Australian art, a 1976 gift from the Australian government, is, according to Farrar, "a pretty phenomenal collection". It includes some early Papanya Tula works along with more contemporary pieces.
The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is at 55 Cable Street, Wellington, New Zealand. Warhol: Immortal is on until August 25.
Julietta Jameson was a guest of New Zealand Tourism and Air New Zealand.
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