A manuscript believed to be one of the last complete essays written by biographer and historian Michael King will be released next month, in a book about an art collection housed in Gore.
King - who died in a car crash in 2004 - wrote the text about New Zealand-born
psychologist John Money's patronage of the arts to complement the John Money Wing of the Eastern Southland Gallery in Gore.
Money, 85 - a sexologist and a psychiatrist to writer Janet Frame - donated his art collection in 2004.
While researching his biography of Frame, King met Money, a longtime friend of Frame's.
The Splendours of Civilisation also looks at Money's association with Frame and how the artworks ended up in the gallery.
King had wanted to write a biography of Money but could not secure a large enough grant and abandoned the idea in 2002.
About the same time, the gallery had started its John Money Wing project and commissioned King to write a smaller book about Money's interest and patronage of writers, artists and composers to accompany it.
He finished a 35-page manuscript a year before he died, but lack of funds and the decision not to rush publication to meet the wing's opening saw it delayed.
King's death delayed the publication further while his family were consulted.
The essay was first started when Money visited Gore in 1998 - with King - and announced his intention to gift his personal art collection to the gallery.
Money had lived in Baltimore since 1951 when he took up an academic position at Johns Hopkins University but continued to collect New Zealand art.
With the support of King, Money's collection was relocated from Baltimore to Gore in 2002, placed in public ownership then put on permanent display in 2003. More than 40,000 people have visited the collection.
- NZPA
