It's been a roller coaster ride for all of us in Christchurch over the last 10 days, and for staff at Christchurch Art Gallery as our workplace became an operational civil defence headquarters. Equally, it has been wonderful to see how sturdy our art gallery building is and how collections in storage and on display have withstood the main jolt on 4 September and the subsequent (but now happily diminishing) tremors as the landscape settles. And how committed and able our staff team has been!!!

As Jenny mentioned in her last post, the Gallery is now being used as the Civil Defence headquarters.

While some buildings in Christchurch suffered a lot of damage in Saturday's earthquake, others, often close by, escaped with none. Within the Gallery library, some shelves and filing cabinets were emptied, but this tower of books was exactly as a I left it on Friday afternoon.

I draw no grand conclusions from this other than the self-evident truth that earthquakes and their effects remain entirely unpredictable.

Tim Jones

Librarian

Final chance to see Andrew Drummond Observation / Action / Reflection and Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, both exhibitions close Sunday 5 September at 5.00 pm.

Having the opportunity to spend over a week in New York recently to work closely with the artist Max Gimblett and his studio assistants in making a selection from Max's extensive collection of works on paper for a gift to Christchurch Art Gallery rates as one of the highlights of my job as a curator.