New director for city art gallery appointed
A new director for the Christchurch Art Gallery has been appointed.
Gallery deputy director Blair Jackson will take over from Jenny Harper, who is leaving after 11 years in the role.
Blair, who will start in his new role on April 3, was appointed deputy director in 2006. He said his ‘‘focus will be on expanding and broadening our audiences and exploring new ways of engaging visitors with our exhibitions programme’’.
Blair graduated from the University of Canterbury’s School of Fine Arts and was a gallery assistant at the Canterbury Society of Arts, now known as CoCA. Before joining the Christchurch Art Gallery, he was exhibition manager at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Toitu¯ Otago Settlers Museum.
When the Christchurch Art Gallery building became Civil Defence’s headquarters after the February 2011 earthquake, Blair fielded a midnight call from the army wanting to clear artworks from an exhibition space so they could be turned into offices. He refused and instead organised a team of gallery staff to take the paintings down for safe storage early in the morning.
The new director takes over the gallery at a critical moment in its history. The gallery has struggled to attract as many visitors as it did before the 2011 earthquakes. It attracted 317,000 visitors in 2016 after reopening in December 2015 following nearly five years of closure, compared to 468,000 in 2009 and 527,000 in 2010.
Monthly visitor numbers for 2016 were about a third lower on average than during 2009 and 2010.
Blair said he wanted to build new audiences for the gallery.
‘‘It is so good having the gallery open again after being closed for five years, but we’ve only just begun. There’s so much more that we want to do. I want us to continue to build great collections, work with innovative artists and build new audiences through outstanding exhibitions and audience-focused programmes,’’ he said.