Opening: Frances Hodgkins, from Dunedin to Waikanae

Join us at the Gallery as we mark a special event – the 150th anniversary of the birth of Frances Hodgkins, New Zealand’s most celebrated expatriate artist.

She’s very important to the Gallery. Twenty-four of her works are included in the Field Collection which will come to the Gallery once it is upgraded to museum standard. The gallery will become the lower North Island centre of the Hodgkins legacy in a 21st century gallery with local resonance but national significance.

Despite being born in Dunedin on 28 April 1869, she is also a local. Her sister Isabel settled in Waikanae and Frances’ ashes are interred in the family plot in Waikanae cemetery.

We will celebrate the anniversary with an exhibition, Frances Hodgkins, from Dunedin to Waikanae, which focuses on little-seen works drawn from private lenders and public collections. The curator is Dr Pamela Gerrish-Nunn, a specialist in Hodgkins’ work.

It opens on Sunday 28 April at 1.30pm, with celebration cake and drinks, followed by a panel at 2.30 chaired by Priscilla Pitts, past director of Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and Hodgkins’ specialists Avenal McKinnon, Tony Mackle and Pamela Gerrish Nunn.