Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Auckland Art Gallery (Māori: Toi o Tāmaki) is the principal public gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. It has the most extensive collection of national and international art in New Zealand and 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 both the Auckland Art Gallery and the Auckland public library, and opened with collections donated by benefactors Governor Sir George Grey and James Tannock Mackelvie. This was the second public art gallery in New Zealand, after the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, which opened. History 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. The collection In Time of Peril , by Lord Leighton , 1897 John Gibb , Low tide, Governor's Bay , 1883 With the extension added in the 1970s, seen from a nearby parking building The Auckland Gallery collection was initially dominated by European old master paintings following the standard taste of the 19th century. Today the collection has expanded to include a wider variety of periods, styles and media, and numbers over 18,000 artworks. Many New Zealand and Pacific artists are represented, as well as Europe, and material from the Middle Ages to the present.