Innovative but pragmatic friend to arts community
As a trailblazing museum director and art historian and, subsequently, independent curator and film-maker, Luit Bieringa has had a major impact on our contemporary culture over a long, prodigious career. He did it all with enormous heart, critical acumen and charm – becoming one of the great friends of our arts.
Bieringa was director of the Manawatu Art Gallery from 1971-1979 and then the National Art Gallery until 1989 (institutions now subsumed by Te Manawa and Te Papa respectively).
With his life and work partner Jan he went on to helm numerous significant cultural projects, including documentaries on seminal figures, among them photographer Ans Westra, arts educator Gordon Tovey, art dealer Peter McLeavey and, premiering just last year, artist Theo Schoon.
A hallmark has been taking on culturally formative yet often controversial subjects — trailblazers too, unafraid to ruffle feathers. Through film, exhibitions, books and building projects Luit has secured shelter for many key artists, while introducing their work to a wider public.
In this way Luit’s work was notable for balancing critical and democratic concerns, and the Bieringas have equally played a significant role in Wellington’s evolution as a hub for creative inquiry and debate.
The son of Lammert and Aaltina Cornelia Bieringa, Luitjen Hendrik Bieringa was born in Groningen, in the Netherlands, in 1942.
In 1956 when Luit was 14 the family emigrated to New Zealand. Like Westra, they were among the last from Holland to receive assisted immigration. This, Luit told me, gave them a sense that they were coming to ‘‘contribute to the infrastructure’’.
Luit attended Hamilton Boys’ High School. Jan and Luit met at the Kiwi Pub in Auckland in 1965 and married in 1967.
Luit’s early cultural adopter status was sealed when, while still at school, he saved money from holiday jobs to buy New Zealand’s first imported new Lambretta motor scooter. In a 60s photograph of Luit and Jan on the scooter a kete can be seen at Luit’s feet – a symbol today of his wish as tauiwi to do his bit in carrying culture forward.
At the University of Auckland in the 1960s, Luit received a Bachelor of Arts, a Master of Arts with honours in German (with time also spent studying art in Perugia, Italy) and finally a Master of Arts in Art History, 1971. Over this period he also worked for three years as a teacher at Selwyn College.
Notably, Luit was the first person in New Zealand to write an art history thesis. His subject: Colin McCahon and Toss Woollaston. An early local art collector, he’d bought a McCahon from Ikon Gallery in his first years at university for the princely sum of £2.
This was to prove formative later, when McCahon – sensing the cultural shifts – persuaded Bieringa to take on the Manawatu Art Gallery directorship. Bieringa went on to curate significant exhibitions of both painters in the 1970s. Toured nationally, these not only helped cement these artists’ reputations, but also the need for the public collecting of our artists to be taken seriously.
With new galleries in New Plymouth, Lower Hutt, Masterton and the strength of Whanganui’s Sarjeant this was an exciting time for the regional art museum in the lower North Island. Luit was one of a new generation of energetic directors, passionate about the developing art scene.
When Bieringa started at the Manawatu it was still based in an old building, but by 1977 a new gallery, acclaimed for its open design, had been opened in the Palmerston North city centre. The display space was said to be equal to that of Auckland Art Gallery’s, but with three staff rather than 20.
Bieringa proved a pioneer in balancing the interests of the local community, the cutting edge and bold international moves – a quality toy show one month, a Diane Arbus show from New York’s Museum of Modern Art the next.
He brought professionalism and a critical eye while also being an adept pragmatist, working to keep stakeholders onside. The new building’s opening exhibition, A Show of Hands, included everything from X-rays to confronting Bruce Barber performance work. On entry, visitors were initially blindfolded and led to touch a range of art objects.
1975’s The Active Eye, curated with Photoforum, was the first major exhibition of New Zealand contemporary photography. It toured to 12 venues and introduced photography as a fine art form. Luit has never shied from controversy, and the work of Fiona Clark in this show gathered plenty, with visits from the police, censorship at less-brave galleries and cancellation outright in Auckland.
By most accounts the National Art Gallery was not in good shape on Bieringa’s arrival in 1979, underresourced and understaffed.
Bieringa sated the taste for international blockbusters while introducing a bold contemporary artist project programme and new energy to the national art collection, including introducing photography. All with a staff small by today’s standards, passionate about the international standard of what they were doing against the odds. Always, says Luit, the door was open to artists.
A highlight was persuading prime minister Rob Muldoon to back a new National Art Gallery in Molesworth St – only for it to be stymied in preference for a new high court. The conversation led to what became Te Papa Tongarewa, and it enabled Bieringa to travel and see dynamic temporary contemporary art spaces overseas.
With a lack of space at the Buckle St old museum building, in 1985 Bieringa boldly led the strengthening and fitting out of the police barracks on the corner of Tory and Buckle streets to become the museum archive and library and Shed 11 as a contemporary exhibition space (now New Zealand Portrait Gallery).
Shed 11 was to host many significant exhibitions, including the German art show Wild Visionary Spectral, which featured Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter and solo shows of American’s Barbara Kruger and Cindy Sherman.
The most significant exhibition was arguably Taki Toru, featuring major works by Ralph Hotere (Black Phoenix), Selwyn Muru and Para Matchitt. A notable gallery purchase at this time was Shona Rapira Davies’ magnificent installation Nga Morehu.
Bieringa was to be controversially dismissed from the National Art Gallery in 1989, increasingly not seeing eye to eye with all aspects of the evolving vision for a new national museum (the government had established a Project Development Board full of big names in 1988). He has been among many advocates since for Te Papa’s redevelopment of a national art gallery – which was finally reinstituted in 2013.
By this time the Bieringas were ready for a new bold move, selling the family’s Hataitai home in 1996 and buying and restoring an old warehouse building on the corner of Blair and Wakefield streets. Again at the forefront, they became inner city residents at a time when it was still unconventional, and again property developers for the arts and design.
Not only did the building afford them a penthouse, but it has also provided office and presentation space, including the practice of the late landscape architect Megan Wraight, who went on to redevelop nearby Waitangi Park. An Oscar’s throw from the capital’s key theatres and cinemas, it has been a cornerstone of the development of the culture of this end of town.
With a Filofax of contacts, the Bieringas have provided much inspiration for the independent arts sector as Blair Wakefield Exhibitions (BWX) Productions, producing, curating and touring exhibitions, including seminal Ans Westra survey Handboek and a postage stamps show with NZ Post, Postal Impressions.
In 2011, when Luit asked for some office space to work in whilst curating the 125th anniversary Old School/New School art and design exhibition for Massey University at the old Buckle St building, he was directed to a small storeroom room to clear out. It was his old office from the 80s.
Retirement was not slow for the Bieringas. Their first of five BWX fulllength documentaries premiered in the International Film Festival in 2006. These have been vital introductions to key, often-underacknowledged figures. Bieringa’s joy, he says, was making ‘‘what is important accessible, and getting other people to join you without compromising your soul’’.
Nor did Luit’s passion for cultural building projects abate. The 2010s saw him work tirelessly for the development of Te Tari Tohorā o Aotearoa, a national whale centre. Something he leaves the nation to carry forward.
Luit died from lymphoma. He is survived by Jan, their children Sven, Olive and Kris, and grandchildren Stella, Lola, Thor and Uma.
Sources: Luit Bieringa, Jan Bieringa, Robert Leonard, John McCormack, Art New Zealand and Scoot NZ.