Gong 'a bit of a giggle' for Gibbs

Dame Jenny Gibbs. Photo / Greg Bowker

Ask Auckland art collector and philanthropist Jenny Gibbs how she feels about being called a dame, and she laughs. "Of course it's a great honour but really it's a bit of a giggle. I feel as though I'm in a pantomime."

Dame Jenny, who flew to Venice on Friday to support the New Zealand presence at the Biennale, has been made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit "for services to the arts", a modest description that barely scratches the surface.

Over the years, Dame Jenny's work has included helping to buy and redevelop the derelict telephone exchange now leased to the Auckland City Council for $1 a year as the New Gallery, an adjunct to the Auckland Art Gallery; establishing the biennial $50,000 Walters Prize for contemporary art; supporting an internship at Artspace Gallery; and substantial patronage of the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, the Opera NZ Foundation and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

She is a board member of the Sea+City Projects, which is overseeing the redevelopment of the Tank Farm in the Wynyard Quarter; she served on the University of Auckland Council for 24 years and continues to work for the University Foundation and the Liggins Institute; and she is on the governing board and art purchasing committee of the university's Gus Fisher Gallery.

"It keeps me off the streets," says the 68-year-old.

The other facet of Dame Jenny's immersion in the art world has been as a collector. With a father and grandfather who both painted, she says, "My father worked for some years with the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington, so without even realising it, I was used to having art in and around the house."

Married in 1961 to businessman Alan Gibbs - they parted in 1996 - she says the first work they bought was "a very, very early" Richard Killeen when they were both students at Victoria University, going on to collect relatively cheap works on paper and prints "in our early married days".

"I've always thought it a great pity when people say, 'Oh it's all very well for you, I can't afford original art'. As a student I could afford original art and everybody else can because there are lots of inexpensive art forms. I bought one from the Elam graduation programme a couple of years ago.

"Having the money [to buy art] wasn't the driving thing. To be honest, it's more of an obsession than the ability to indulge it. You're not a collector until you realise you've got stuff under the beds and in the wardrobes. You don't buy things because you think, 'I've got a nice gap above the sofa'. You buy it because you love it and you have to have it."

Looking back, Dame Jenny - "proud grandmother of four" and owner of "little prima donna" poodles Tosca and Puccini - recalls that the New Gallery project was inspired by a conversation with a friend in the United States.

"I said to her, 'Auckland really needs a contemporary art space, I'd love to be able to help with that. I'll do something in my will.' She said (Dame Jenny adopts a drawling American accent) 'Darlin', don't wait till then - do it now, when you can see it and enjoy it.'

"So that's how it came about, funnily enough."