Home is where the art is

Jenny Gibbs' patronage and lifelong passion for the arts will be recognised tonight when she is awarded Auckland City's Distinguished Citizen Award. By JULIE MIDDLETON


It's not just about the money, says Jenny Gibbs, millionaire super-supporter of New Zealand art. "I've put vastly more than money into the arts. Time and energy and commitment.

"I personally drove things like the New Gallery and made it happen.

"I drove things like [last year's] McCahon exhibition [at the Auckland Art Gallery] - I pursued that for many years. I've put a lot of energy into a current exhibition in New York which has young Maori and Pacific artists in it.

"Those sorts of things don't happen unless you push them."

Dilettante is not a label you could apply to Gibbs, a gently spoken woman who describes her age as "old enough to be a grandmother". (She has four children with her former husband, millionaire investor Alan Gibbs; three grandchildren; three dogs).

She has positions with a long list of arts groups, among them Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery; the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa; Auckland Philharmonia; and the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She's been on the University of Auckland council almost continuously since 1976, and is a major donor to the Elam School of Fine Arts. She has roles with the Auckland Medical School Foundation and the Auckland University Foundation and has just left the Opera New Zealand board. Phew.

Art captured her early. Father Ross and grandfather Harry were both amateur landscape painters. Both became presidents of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, the only professional arts body before the advent of dealer galleries.


Gibbs' social life among the great and good of Auckland is of great interest to the gossips: she recently hosted National Party leader Don Brash's "Welcome back to Auckland" cocktails.

Several years ago she was linked with Maori activist Tame Iti ("I don't even know whether he's around Auckland") and was the person who paid fellow activist Te Kaha's fines for stealing a Colin McCahon mural ("Te Kaha is a good friend. He's really the best greenstone carver around, I think").

She attends the opening nights of opera escorted by, say, writer Witi Ihimaera, and rubs shoulders with fellow opera-goers such as Prime Minister Helen Clark.

Gibbs, who has a masters degree in history and was once a junior lecturer at Victoria University, doesn't do any arty dabbling of her own because "I know just enough about art not to. I would never be satisfied with my own painting, because over the years I've looked at a huge amount of art and have probably developed a super-critical eye".


Yes, her home contains a great many artworks. No, she doesn't know their value. And no, she isn't going to discuss the sum they are insured for, either.

But she'll give you this for free: her advice on buying a piece of art is the maxim she herself follows: "If you go away and it lingers in the mind, that's the one you should buy."

Auckland Art Gallery director Chris Saines says Gibbs' accolade is richly deserved.

"She's stellar when it comes to really being someone who doesn't just talk about supporting things but does so in a very pro-active way ...

"A lot of the work Jenny does is not in terms of [the financial] contributions that she makes but in terms of the work that she does."