Hundreds braved the cold in the wee hours of this morning to watch a golden cupola be placed atop Whangārei’s Hundertwasser centre.
Before that, the 3.5 tonne structure had to glide into the town basin on a barge. It then had to be hoisted from the river to be put into place.
It’s made of aluminium and coated with $50,000 worth of Italian gold leaf. It took six weeks to gild by hand and is expected to last a century.
It caps off decades of controversy for the project. After Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s death in 2000, there was debate over the $33.2 million project, which ended up employing nearly 600 tradespeople.
“Controversial is the word. The community was incredibly divided over the whole project and the community came together and made this happen,” Whangārei District Council Mayor Sheryl Mai said.
The art centre’s design was Hundertwasser’s parting gift to the people of Whangārei in 1990.
“Extraordinary art polarises people wherever you find it … but it provokes conversations too, and those conversations are important,” said Kathleen Drumm, chief executive of the Whangārei Art Museum.
The first shipment of art for the gallery leaves Vienna in a month. It's a mixture of graphic design, tapestry and 3D models. It was donated by the Hundertwasser Foundation and is all the artist’s work from his time in New Zealand.
The art gallery is expected to bring more than 70,000 visitors a year to the Northland city once it opens in December.
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