From a 17th-century Spanish masterpiece to a radical whare whakairo to a 1980s photo embodying resistance, these five works show us the power and ongoing relevance of art history.
The government has announced that art history is to be scrubbed off the secondary school curriculum, with elements of the subject instead to be integrated into visual arts subjects – which are more about creating art than studying it. The distinction is important: many people who study art history are not makers. Instead, what they’re after is the history – what does art tell us about what was happening in politics, culture, philosophy and visual culture at the time a work was made? How was it received? How has its meaning changed over time? And why?
We asked five Aotearoa art historians and curators to select one artwork and tell us about what it can reveal to us today.
Whare whakairo
Selected by Ngarino Ellis, professor of art history, University of Auckland; co-editor of award-winning Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art.
Building the whare whakairo Hau Te Ananui o Tangaoa, also known as the Maori house, at Canterbury Museum. Photo by John Bradley. Reproduced with permission.
Uia mai koia, whakahuatia ake
Ko wai te whare nei e
Ko Hau Te Ana Nui o Tangaroa e.
Whakapapa is a way to connect back into the past and collapse generations into time frames that feel real. Whare whakairo beautifully and powerfully demonstrate the lives and adventures of our tipuna – both those who are remembered in the house, but also all those involved in their creation: the artists, their patrons and communities who revere them.
Yet for us as Ngati Porou, with our reputation as forward-thinking creatives and our humble nature, the whare Hau Te Ananui o Tangaroa is little known. The whakairo and kowhaiwhai by Hone Taahu and Tamati Ngaka were commissioned by Henare Potae in the 1860s, and later by Canterbury Museum in the 1870s, and are radical for their experimental nature: gun-holding tipuna, bright blue waves scrolling up the maihi, and strange elongated figures stretching along the heke tipi on the far wall. The whare’s existence reconfirms the close whakapapa of Ngati Porou and Ngāi Tahu, and with the re-erection of the whare once more as part of the museum’s renovation plans, the joy and vibrancy of Iwirakau-style art will once again shine bright.
Aue! Aue!
He koruru koe, koro e!
Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez (oil on canvas)
Selected by Christina Barton, MNZM DLitt, art historian, curator, writer and educator based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington; and author of forthcoming Out of the Blue: Essays on Artists from Aotearoa New Zealand from 1985–2021.
Las Meninas by Diego Velázquez, 1656 (Oil on canvas, Museo Nacional del Prado)
My 26-year-old daughter is on her first OE in Europe. Right now she is in Madrid. As promised, she sent me a photo in the Prado where I insisted she visit Diego Velázquez’s most famous painting, Las Meninas. I am in awe of this painting and although I’ve never stood in front of it I have spent countless hours looking at it and thinking about it. Because I’m a teacher, my daughter has inherited my pleasure and respect, we now share this treasure.
As those with a basic education in art history will know, this magnificent canvas was painted for the Spanish royal family by their court painter in 1656. But it is by no means a standard portrait of Velázquez’s royal patrons. What we see in this painting is one of the great reflections on the very idea of what it means to “picture” and of who controls the image, factors that are essential for all of us to understand in our image-saturated age. There in the foreground is the Infanta Margaret surrounded by her handmaidens, seemingly the subject of the picture. But to the left we see part of the back of a stretched canvas and beside it, as if stepping back to see his subject, is the painter, brush in hand, also looking out of the picture. What is everyone looking at? We finally realise that the real subjects of this painting are King Philip IV and Queen Mariana, who are reflected in the mirror at the back of the room. These symbolic figures are absent from the picture but everything is organised around them.
Then, the real revelation hits. We, the viewer, are standing where the reflected royals would be. They are all looking at us! How utterly intriguing. To know why Velázquez made this work is to understand the mindset of his age, just as we understand the messages encoded in a press photo of Putin bare-chested on horseback or a music video of Beyoncé and Jay-Z in the Louvre. Art history is the key to understanding how images work, it is an essential tool to see what is really going on.
Mana te Nōki Kārena (Martin), Ngāruahine by Fiona Clark (vintage cibachrome photograph)
Selected by Kirsty Baker, art historian, curator and editor of Sight Lines: Woman and Art in Aotearoa.
Mana te Nōki Kārena (Martin), Ngāruahine by Fiona Clark (From the portfolio Ngā Whaea o te Moana – Taranaki, 1982,
vintage cibachrome photograph, reproduced with permission)
This photograph is part of a sustained body of work that Clark made in the early 1980s in support of the Motunui-Waitara Waitangi Tribunal claim led by Te Atiawa. This claim sought to recognise customary fishing rights in the area, and to protect against both current and future pollution of the waters of north Taranaki. Clark photographed 10 women instrumental to that work, including Mana te Nōki Kārena, who chose to be pictured in the rocky intertidal land of Te Whanganui Iwawaka Reserve.
This is a photograph of connection, of kaitiakitanga, of resistance. Compositionally, Clark links the mauri stone that Mana te Nōki Kārena is touching to both the moana and to Taranaki maunga, building a visual expression of whakapapa. It’s a photograph made in collaboration – tangata whenua and tangata Tiriti – that centres the kaitiakitanga of Mana te Nōki Kārena, refracted through the lens of Clark’s camera.
When I think about what I want people to experience when they encounter an artwork, it’s all here, in this image. It leads us outwards into the world, asking us to engage more deeply with the realities of the places we inhabit.
Aramoana (1980-83) by Ralph Hotere (Te Aupōuri) (lacquer on corrugated iron and wood)
Selected by Nathan Pōhio, kaitiaki matua, toi Māori/senior curator, Māori art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
From 1972 to 1991, Ralph Hotere lived at Koputai Port Chalmers, where his studio looked out towards Aramoana and Taiaroa Head at the mouth of the Otago Harbour. A recurrent theme underlying Hotere’s art is his profound respect for the land and vigilance towards how we live together within it. During the late 1970s he started a series of works that protested an aluminium smelter proposed for the Aramoana coastline, fearing it would devastate the ecologically important wetland.
In this work, ‘ARAMOANA’ – which means “pathway to the sea” – is repeated beneath explosions of white paint on black lacquer. Drips of white paint bleed down the dark metal, leading the eye toward texts in te reo Māori, including old place names of the surrounding peninsula. A rainbow arch appears in a kōkōwai-like paint (auburn earth pigment) across the 10 panels, suggesting hope for the Aramoana community. Shortly before Aramoana, 1980-83 was completed, the government withdrew plans to construct the smelter.
1988. Hori Korei. George Grey monument, Albert Park, Tāmaki Makaurau by Mark Adams (printed 2024, silver bromide print)
Selected by Sarah Farrar, pouarataki o ngā kairauhī me ngā akoranga/head of curatorial and learning, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Mark Adams, 1988. Hori Korei. George Grey monument. Albert Park. Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, 1988 {printed 2024}, silver bromide print, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2025. Reproduced with permission.
A single image can hold divergent perspectives. The subject of this photograph is ostensibly a monument to Sir George Grey (1812–1898), located near Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in Albert Park. A British soldier and scholar, Grey was governor of New Zealand twice, from 1845-53 and 1861-68. He also donated a significant collection of taonga Māori, European paintings and other items to form the gallery’s founding collection.
Once known as “Good Governor Grey”, he is today a controversial and divisive figure due to his leading role in the New Zealand Wars and colonisation of the country. While Grey was on cordial terms with Apihai Te Kawau (circa 1780-1869), chief of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, tangata whenua of central Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, he had a hostile relationship with other iwi.
Sculpted by Francis Williamson in England, this monument was erected in Albert Park in 1904. Mark Adams (born 1949) photographed the statue in 1988, after it had been beheaded as part of a Waitangi Day protest. Grey’s head was promptly replaced. It has since seen other actions, including being smeared with blood red paint in 2020 at the time of Black Lives Matter protests.