Simon Denny, Jenny Gibbs. Photos / Supplied, Greg Bowker
Hold on to your hankies: this is my last column here (although I'm still going to hang around like a mad swell, reviewing theatre). And so, to end on a high note, here are some awards celebrating the superlative and the superfluous of 2014.
Best quiet achievement: The new Khartoum Place stairs, allowing a full-length view of the Auckland Art Gallery for those carrying their salads out of Revive in Lorne St, while leaving the beloved and important suffragette mural intact.
Worst quiet back-track: Te Papa North, trumpeted with elephantine fanfare last year as a definite go-ahead, being downgraded by the National government to something requiring a "feasibility" investigation. This is the same status they bestowed on the hitherto unknown white pachyderm of an idea of a "National War Museum" in Wellington. Isn't it enough that even the Royal New Zealand Ballet's beloved annual contemporary show will be sacrificed to war commemoration next year? If the warmongering dogs really do need a heritage bone, can't Auckland War Memorial Museum just open a branch down there? It's a safe bet that Welly gets its war glorification before we see the merest pipsqueak of a Te Papa.
Best publisher website: www.luncheonsausagebooks.com by one Steve Braunias, featuring a catalogue of just one book: Madmen - Inside the Weirdest Election Campaign Ever, by one Steve Braunias. Inside the weirdest publisher site ever is jaunty muzak, random holiday snaps in random orders, and an educational timeline explaining how this one-time Barry Manilow lookalike smartened up and became a successful self-publisher.
The book itself is a collection of extremely fun Metro columns, chronicling those halcyon, heady days of September when we callow fellows naively thought both winter and parliament might melt into something slightly warmer. Instant nostalgia. (Except where have your neat blurry pics of TV3's election debate hack snacks gone?)
Alasdair Thompson memorial award for patronising the ladies: Auckland establishment theatre (still). Although Silo Theatre hires a variety of male and female directors, and started doing so even before Sophie Roberts became their artistic director, Auckland Theatre Company lists zero female directors on its main bill over 2014-15, limiting its own talent pool. And of the 22 main-season plays put on by both companies over the same two years, only three will be written solely by women. Such wilful sexism " the world does not want for good plays by women " makes Late at the Museum look positively progressive. It shouldn't: the museum's 2014 panel discussions were still all chaired by men; and they were joined by 10 male and five female panelists. Apart from Silo Theatre's directors, in the six years I've been harping on about these stats, nothing has changed.
Best advertisement for Venice Biennale artist Simon Denny: Dame Jenny Gibbs rearranging her biennale funding, so that none of it would go to Denny's research consultant, Nicky Hager. Upsetting the most important arts funder in the land - without even trying - is street cred that money can't buy.