Art winner's husband among judges

A judge of the Wallace Art Awards was the husband of Sara Hughes, the overall winner.

However, one of the five-member judging panel said Gregor Kregar played no part in discussing his wife's entry.

Sara Hughes won this year's Paramount Award at the Wallace Art Awards for which she received a $35,000 cash prize and a United Kingdom residency, including air fares, for her work Download, an optical art work on canvas.

Mr Kregar was one of the five judges of the awards, which had several categories.

His appeared with other judges on a press release announcing the winners, and was on the official Wallace Art Awards website.

Sara Hughes told the Herald it was the sixth time she had entered the awards and never knew in advance who the judges were going to be, although Mr Kregar had been a judge the previous year.

She said her husband made it clear to the other judges right from the start he would not be commenting on her entry because they were both aware of the potential conflict of interest.

Mr Kregar, a sculptor, was the 2000 winner of the Wallace Art Awards and like many other winners had subsequently been invited to be a judge.

Sara Hughes said all the judges knew they were a couple, as well as patron James Wallace who chose the judges. She said the art community in New Zealand was small and it could be difficult to avoid conflicts of interest.

One of the judges, Richard Fahey, agreed such conflicts were not unusual. "New Zealand is a small place and the art world is even smaller."

Mr Fahey, a design lecturer at Unitec, said there was strict protocol to deal with such conflict, which had been followed. Mr Kregar had declared his situation from the outset and played no part in discussing Sara Hughes' entry, but helped the judges select other finalists.