Art's smoothest operator

Chris Saines shows off an exhibit carrying the signatures of artists supporting his grand $90 million revamp of the Auckland Art Gallery. Picture / Greg Bowker

Towards the end of the interview, Chris Saines, the director of the Auckland Art Gallery, tells me that he is "a glass half-full guy, rather than a glass half-empty guy". Really, I say, I would never have figured that out.

This is after almost an hour in which he brays with laughter, often, and especially when he thinks he's scored a point. He runs a joke throughout the interview in which he pretends to believe that I am very knowledgeable about the arts. This is because he's been banging on about the speech the Walters prize judge gave and how "you would have loved it. Even a person who wasn't necessarily kind of highly knowledgeable about art would have got a tremendous amount out of it". I say, "I might be tremendously knowledgeable about art for all you know." He takes this as permission to talk about increasingly arcane matters of art. And then to tell me I would obviously know all about so and so.

He pretends to get huffy - he's got a nerve after his little joke - but only for effect. He likes the theatrical. His great love is the art and art history of the Baroque period. He is in a very good mood, as well he might be. Last Saturday his grand vision for the $90 million restoration and extension of the gallery got its resource consent stamp. That represents a victory any great salesman would celebrate.

"It has been a great week," he says. There was the Walters Prize on Tuesday night, the glamour highlight of the gallery's year. "We had the dinner, we had a very well-attended event. We had the Prime Minister there and the mayor and quite a few councillors and others from Auckland City."

He is a big fan of the PM; he thinks she's pretty cool. "Of course I do! Of course. She's been enormously beneficial to those of us who work in the arts community."

I'm sure he was terrifically good at the dinner, and is at all social events. Such things are partly theatre and he loves attending the corporate dos and the hob-nobbing that comes with the role. He's very good at that schmoozing stuff, isn't he? "Well, that's your word. Ha, ha. It has been said. I love doing it, I really don't consider it a burden of office. I naturally enjoy that role and it's never been something that I've felt I need to feel self-conscious of or apologise for."

He says that being the public face of the gallery involves a lot of hospitality " ... and that doesn't mean that you're kind of perpetually in snake oil mode, that you've got to work the room or any of that sort of stuff. But you are in the business of forming and building and nourishing relationships."

And, occasionally, placating. He tells a story which says quite a bit about the world of big art prizes. The difficulty with such prizes, he says, is that "art doesn't operate like horses in a horse race. And the whole idea of art being in competition with other art and determining a work which for whatever reasons is determined to be best or better is for many artists - for most possibly - problematic." Which is why the Walters has one winner, who gets $50,000, but why its four finalists each get $5000.

Still, at the ceremony he was bailed up (that is my choice of words; he'd be much more diplomatic) by the friend of a finalist. "And they were obviously partisan and maybe they were, you know, a bit unhappy in the context of the announcement that had just been made. And she really challenged me by saying: 'Well, what did you think of his work?' And I said, 'I really like his work and this is why I like the work.' And I got pressed again by this person saying, 'Well, is this the work that you would have chosen if you were the judge?' And I said, 'No, I possibly would have chosen the work that was chosen by the judge and that was one that I privately felt was an extremely deserving work, but by the same token every one of those works could have won and every one of those choices I would have felt, for a different sort of reason, was the right choice'."

See how good he is? He is in the business of selling. He wouldn't object to that description as long as it applies to art and looking at it and celebrating it. He is very good at it.

He is also a politician. "Um, maybe that's part of my role. I don't just work within the context of Auckland City but I am very much part of Auckland City because that's precisely where the gallery sits within the broad spectrum of things that the community houses: Facilities, parks and all the rest of it that the city provides." I think that provides a fairly good clarification of whether he's a politician.

In May, at a time when there was much debate about the proposed $90 million restoration and expansion of the gallery, I phoned Saines and asked for an interview. He was very nice about it but he said no, that the time wasn't right. I got the impression that the time wasn't right because he couldn't be seen to be politicking. He says, "No, it would have been seen to be sort of precipitous ... and it simply would not have been appropriate for me to have been, as it were, front-footing."

Because it would have looked like politicking. "What we were trying to do was allow the regulatory process to run its course and not seem like this is the moment of providing the case for, as opposed to rebutting the case against."

All of which sounds suspiciously like that P word he doesn't like. But the proof - according to me - of how adept he is at this is that he has sold his grand idea. The plans have the needed resource consent. This doesn't mean he has won everybody over.

I wonder if Saines thinks he has avoided being portrayed as the tree vandal who will be held responsible for the removal or pruning of a number of Albert Park trees. "Well, I don't consider myself a tree vandal." Of course he wouldn't, but has he avoided being seen as one? "Well, I think you'd have to answer that because you've read the press - most of it's been in your newspaper."

Earlier, he has spent some time telling me that he is not a door slammer or a "tanty thrower, I don't throw books and files across the room. I never have". But the question about whether he thinks he'll be regarded as the bloke who ruined that lovely old building proves an accusation too far. He gets up from his chair and finds a wad of papers and says, "I urge you to read the consent on this one because there's a paragraph in the consent which I'll read to you ... because You Won't Read It."

Is it very long? "No, it's half a bloody bullet point." While he's flicking through pages, I say, quite innocently I thought, and just to make conversation: "Why didn't you want a nice new gallery down on the waterfront?"

"Oh, God," he groans. "Here we go. Let me just read this." He's had a pretty good run, so I decide to say, "Are you good at PR?" I think this is quite reasonable because it is all, of course, public relations for his big idea. "Did he get trained in PR?" "No. I Did Not," he says and throws the file and shouts, "I Did Not Get Trained In PR."

Well, he did say he enjoyed things theatrical. He hadn't mentioned his talent for comedy. And he does get the last laugh. As he goes to have his photograph taken he is still snorting away at his joke about how knowledgeable I am about art.