In April 2016 there was a launch of a website dedicated to the Rewi Alley collection held at the Canterbury Museum that revealed new and surprising perspectives on New Zealand’s most extensive collection of Chinese decorative art.
Held in its Asian Gallery, the collection is made up of Chinese artefacts, ceramics and paintings, comprising 5000 years of history.
Gifted by social reformer, Rewi Alley (1897- 1987), its inventory of 1378 items raises almost as many questions. How did Australasia’s most comprehensive collection of Chinese artefacts end up at the Canterbury Museum? And why was the Chinese Communist Government approving their export to New Zealand during the Cold War in the 1950s?
Head of Art History and Theory at the University of Canterbury Dr Richard Bullen and Associate Professor James Beattie from the University of Waikato have many of the answers.
In 2015, they travelled to China as the recipients of a three-year Marsden Grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand and they have launched the website to piece together more about its history.
Dr Richard Bullen and Dr James Beattie travelled to Inner Mongolia and China to examine the sites where some of the art was gathered and to visit the Shandan Museum.
Yet, although their interests reside primarily in questions about the relationship that Alley forged between China and New Zealand, as Bullen acknowledges, the collection is equally about social connections and two people: Rewi Alley from Springfield and Canterbury Museum’s director from 1948 to 1978, Roger Duff.
The son of a school teacher, Alley travelled out of curiosity to China in 1927, remaining a permanent resident there for the rest of his life. Working as a factory inspector in the 1930s in Shanghai and headmaster of Shandan Bailie School in Gansu in the 1940s, he had direct experience of China’s poverty prior to the 1949 communist revolution.
Bullen observes that Alley became “extremely involved from the 1950s in representing ‘New China’ on the international stage”. However, he also notes that Alley went in and out of fashion in New Zealand. In the 1940s, he was a local hero working in China, but during the Korean War in the 1950s he was out of favour. By the 1970s, as relationships between Wellington and Beijing improved, his reputation recovered.
On his first visit back to New Zealand in 1932, he brought Chinese artefacts which he donated to the Museum. These included a gilded bronze figurine from Inner Mongolia belonging to the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644).
“Alley had said to Duff that he enjoyed going to the Canterbury Museum as a boy,” says Bullen. “He had a fondness for it and that was why he started gifting works from China. He visited New Zealand again in 1937, this time returning with rare and interesting amulets from the Yuan Dynasty (1271 – 1368). They are connected with the Eastern Church in China and 1500 of them are known worldwide. All are different. They are all cast in bronze, but only one cast has been made of each.
“The next collection period was from 1937 to 1960, with Alley remaining in China, relying on visiting New Zealanders to carry artefacts back. People like John Johnson (once a resident of Sumner), brought back a Han Dynasty pot (206BC-220AD). It seems as though Alley gave everyone who was visiting him a pot to take home.
“Part of the fascination of this story is the extensive social networks that allowed this collection to come together. Alley moved to Shandan in the 1940s and became headmaster of Bailie School. In 1947, assisted by Wright Stevenson (now PGG Wrightson), a group of New Zealand farmers donated 25 Corriedale sheep to Shandan. In 2000, the Museum was gifted a woollen carpet made by children from the Bailie School which had previously graced a Christchurch home. The wool was from the first clippings of those sheep and the carpet was woven at the Shandan Bailie School.”
The period from 1937 to 1960 also included a visit by Canterbury Museum director Roger Duff, says Bullen. “He significantly bolstered the Museum’s collection because of Alley’s connection to China’s communist leadership, including Chairman Mao. Duff had a strong research interest in China which matched his political sympathies and role in the World Peace Movement (which China then headed). He came back with seven crates of Chinese artefacts. Alley obtained an export license for Duff’s hordes and subsequent export licenses were also granted.”
Bullen says that the director of the Imperial Palace Museum in Beijing, Wu Zhongchao was instrumental in getting the export license, with a letter to Duff suggesting that China’s art would encourage “New Zealand to get a better understanding of China and its culture”.
“In 1958, the Canterbury Museum opened the Hall of Oriental Art. This is now the Asian Gallery. It was the first such gallery in Australasia by many years. No Australian gallery had a dedicated space for Asian art until the 1970s. Duff was a museum professional, so when designing the Hall of Oriental Art he wanted Chinese furniture and asked Wu Zhongchao. In exchange, he gave Wu two complete Moa skeletons from Pyramid Valley in North Canterbury. Christchurch still has the furniture and Beijing’s Natural History Museum has the skeletons.
“By the 1940s the idea for the Museum was to create a collection of Chinese art and material culture, representing the length and sophistication of Chinese culture. It became more prominent after 1949 and was developed in collaboration with Duff. Alley and Duff became a combined force, with Duff a big supporter of New China. Alley played a key role in facilitating visits to China and promoting New China. The story of the Rewi Alley collection is also of these two men.”
Article by Press Reporter Warren Feeney published 30 April 2016
