Dunedin boasts exhibition coup

By LINDA HERRICK arts editor

A substantial collection of 19th-century pre-Raphaelite paintings from the Tate Gallery in London is expected to attract thousands of visitors from around the country and across the Tasman to Dunedin next year.

The Dunedin Public Art Gallery will be the only New Zealand venue to host Private Passions: The Pre-Raphaelite Dream, a collection of 71 iconic paintings, drawings and prints by artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, Sir John Millais, Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Frederick Sandys.

It will open at the end of October and run until mid-February 2004. Only two other cities - Perth in Australia and Nashville in the United States - will also host the show.

"We worked very hard to ensure Dunedin would be the only New Zealand venue to get the collection," said Dunedin Public Art Gallery director Priscilla Pitts.

"We will be promoting it very heavily nationwide and Tourism Dunedin is already in Sydney pushing it to tour operators.

"We want to bring visitors from Sydney here to see it rather than have them go to Perth."

Ms Pitts said she expected the visitor numbers to exceed the 68,000 people who paid to see the gallery's most recent international collection, Masterpieces From the Guggenheim Museum. For security and insurance reasons, the value of the collection cannot be revealed but Pitt said, "I think we can assume it's a pretty valuable collection of work".

Barry Colman, publisher of the exhibition's principal sponsor, the National Business Review, said he planned to offer an extra incentive for people to attend the show: a random draw to send a ticket holder to London to visit the Tate Gallery.