KEY POINTS:
Tauranga can no longer be accused of lacking a cultural heart with the opening of the city's first public art gallery today.
Prime Minister Helen Clark will open the $8 million Tauranga Art Gallery this morning, in a ceremony timed to coincide with the Tauranga Arts Festival, which began in the city on Thursday.
Highlights of the festival include the World Press Photo exhibition, which features the winners of the world's most respected press photography competition.
Tauranga is the only city in New Zealand to see the annual exhibition this year, and the photos are being displayed on the second floor of the gallery's new 700sq m exhibition space.
Invited guests got a preview of the exhibition and a peek at the gallery's sleek new interior on Thursday night.
Gallery director Richard Arlidge said the opening was, in the words of Tauranga Mayor Stuart Crosby, "a great leap forward" for the city and the fast-growing western Bay of Plenty region.
"It will certainly make life more interesting here, and it will be a place of engagement, entertainment and a place of reference," Mr Arlidge said.
The gallery plans exhibitions of historical, modern and contemporary art, as well as education and visitor programmes.
Located in the CBD, on the corner of Wharf and Willow Sts, it is housed in an old BNZ bank building bought for $1.7 million. Refurbishments began in February last year.
The gallery will employ 12 full-time equivalent staff plus volunteers, and has a $1 million annual operating budget primarily funded by the Tauranga City Council.
The Arts Festival, meanwhile, brings an array of local and international music, art, theatre, dance and literature to the city through Labour Weekend and next week.
Already proving a major drawcard is Earth From Above, a series ofaerial portraits taken by French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand over 14 years.
The exhibition opened last weekend and is expected to attract more than 100,000 visitors by the time the festival finishes on October 28.
The photos are set up outside, in a row along Tauranga's waterfront road, The Strand.
The images invite viewers to consider the impact of humans on the environment while admiring the beauty of the natural world.
