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On the unlikely site of an unused staircase in Wellington 's Victoria University, local architect Ian Athfield has created an art gallery of great formal presence. A zinc-clad black cube, the gallery rises fourteen metres between the Victorian architecture of the Hunter Building and the 1980s' glass and concrete Student Union.
The opening of the Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi in September, 1999 was a bold step for the University. The decision to build a University gallery comes at a time when economic constraints dominate tertiary funding. Finance for the building costs, a modest $2.2 million, came from outside sources. Benefactors Denis and Verna Adam contributed almost half, with additional support from private sources. The University will pick up the Gallery's estimated NZ$200,000 annual tab for operational costs and future projects will be funded through grants and other forms of fundraising.
Art collections exist in several New Zealand tertiary institutions but by international standards the collections are modest in scale. The University of Otago's Hocken Library remains the only institution to employ a team of specialist curators and to operate a professionally-managed museum for its substantial pictorial and heritage collections. The lack of local precedent tor University art museums makes the Adam Art Gallery an even more daring enterprise. It says much for the tenacity of Jenny Harper, Head of Art History, that the Gallery has been built at all.
However the boldness of this initiative has also been contentious. Most dramatic has been the furore both inside and beyond the University following the decision early this year to de-accession Colin McCahon's painting Storm Warning, 1980-81. Facing a building fund shortfall, the de-accessioning was promoted as a means to