Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre — Attraction in North Island

The centre is a magnificent building made of polished stainless steel which is blinded several people over the years apparently. Inside we were exposed to several exhibitions but the highlights is clearly the kinetic art of Len Lye. For those of you Philistines not familiar with jargon of the art world I will simplify. Len lye it seems was famous for inventing the wobbly stick. We saw several wobbly sticks in turn, each in the dark with a Spotlight turned on them to highlight the drama of a wobbly stick. Then in another room we saw a whole collection of wobbly sticks wobbling at the same time. This was also very noisy, but despite the risk we stuck it out to have the full experience of wobbly sticks dancing together. The noise was much like the sound of cutting concrete, which we had heard on the trip to the gallery, but the wobbly sticks made it an artistic noise.

The logical extension to this is now on the seafront where there is a large bending stick with a ball on top, called the wind wand. It bends in the wind which seems to please the greater artistic community greatly.

Next we saw an exhibition of chairs arranged meaningfully. These were chairs from important people in the Taranaki community. We were able to sit in some of the chairs as an artistic experience and read about the people who originally owned the chairs.

Then they had a speaker making a series of seemingly unconnected statements. This was very deep...

Don’t bother coming if you want to take anything other than photos on your phone. Their policy states: “Non-flash photography and filming is allowed in the galleries for personal, non-commercial purposes only.”

We were approached multiple times and regardless of us HONESTLY saying that our photos were for personal use they told us we needed to fill out the form and pay the fees. So they decided for us that we were lying and that we were doing this commercially, when in fact this was not the case. At all. We want to make beautiful art for ourselves.

We are not new to the policies of galleries and we have always read them prior to make sure we are following the laws and respecting artists. We are artist as well, but apparently the respect is not mutual.

We ended up feeling so unwelcome we left, and on a personal note it’s really tainted the experience for me. Regardless of the photography we were doing, the rest of the displays were ruined for me by this.

There is beautiful art here, really special and unique art. But art is for sharing and inspiring and showing who you are. If you want to share your art here through your body: (as I’m a contortionist) if you’re a dancer, gymnasts, acrobat or any performing artist with your body, be prepared for the...

Love the buildings architecture and the exhibits were really interesting. However, the treatment we got from staff is the reason for the 1 star review. We were approached multiple times by a staff member about whether the photos we were taking were for commercial use or not. I read the photography policy prior to arriving & it stated photos for personal use were okay. However this staff member refused to believe the photos were for personal use only and seemed pretty insistent that we needed to fill out the commercial photography consent form, obtain gallery & artist consent, schedule a time & pay fees. We ended up feeling so harrased & unwelcome by this staff member we cut our visit to the gallery short and left. Gallery staff need to be educated on what exactly commercial photography is, and have the decency & respect to believe a patron when they say their photos are for personal use only rather than to assume they are lying. Overall our experience with the gallery has been...