Te Pataka Toi Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington

Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery is the purpose-built public art gallery of Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. The Gallery is a forum for research, dialogue and critical thinking across media, disciplines, cultures and contexts. Since its establishment in 1999, the Gallery has presented a highly-regarded programme of exhibitions, events and publications for staff and students of the University and the wider public.

The gallery acts as a university-wide resource where different disciplines meet; a platform where audiences come together, in a striking building that responds to the topography of its Kelburn campus location in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, the capital of Aotearoa New Zealand.

The gallery prides itself on supporting artists to develop ambitious new projects and on its curated exhibitions that offer new, timely, and critical insights into art and its histories. It believes in art’s potential to mirror, reflect, and act on the issues and concerns that galvanise society in all its complexity and dissension. It seeks to engage with art to deepen understanding, expand knowledge and create powerful experiences.

Adam Art Gallery manages the Ngā Puhipuhi o Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington Art Collection, a nationally significant collection of New Zealand art built over many decades to enrich the physical environs of the University and represent the recent history of art in Aotearoa New Zealand. This resource is on display in the public spaces of the University where students and staff encounter it daily.

It also manages the New Zealand Art Research & Study Centre which houses the New Zealand Art Archive, a collection of books, catalogues, journals, theses, images, and archival materials built through the work of the Gallery and its academic colleagues in Art History. The gallery offers a range of opportunities for students through our volunteer and internship programmes, as well as providing a range of public talks, tours, seminars, workshops and lectures.