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Masterton's Wairarapa Museum and Art Gallery will receive two significant artworks from the collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), Wairarapa MP Georgina Beyer announced today.
The Government has decided to repatriate 59 major works of art from New Zealand's overseas posts. Twenty-one have already returned to New Zealand for distribution and the remaining 38 will return during the next three years.
The Wairarapa Museum and Art Gallery will receive John Weeks' Untitled - landscape (c.1940) and Sir Toss Woollaston's Landscape (c1965). The Woollaston work is currently on display in Brussels and the Weeks is in storage in Wellington.
The Wairarapa Arts Foundation was set up in 1964. The gallery has collections of contemporary New Zealand paintings, prints and Māori taonga relating to the Wairarapa region. Its collection policy includes a focus on work from the region and has benefited from a number of gifts toward this end.
These works by John Weeks and Toss Woollaston will be useful in enlarging the gallery's representation of New Zealand landscape paintings. Currently it has no works by John Weeks and its three Woollaston works are portraits.
Ms Beyer welcomed the Government's initiative to return significant artworks to New Zealand and distribute them throughout the regions.
She said the gift from the government's art collection was an important one for the Wairarapa Museum and Art Gallery and the people of Wairarapa.
"These are significant works by pre-eminent New Zealand artists. I am delighted we will now have access to them in our museum."
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