Back-up band

With sources of sponsorship and funding uncertain, the Aotearoa arts community relies on a small but committed group of patrons.

- BY PAUL LITTLE

The arts consist of a constantly evolving but basically stable ecosystem of practitioners, auction houses, theatre groups of all shapes and sizes, musical ensembles, freelance musicians and singers, collectors, increasingly popular art fairs, and public and dealer galleries.

A figure common to all those is the patron. The image of the benevolent, sometimes bejewelled, plutocrat bestowing largesse on a favoured practitioner, is not entirely inaccurate, but nor is it the whole story.

Patrons come and go, but they seldom leave as conspicuously as James Wallace, following his convictions and jail time for indecent assault and attempting to pervert the course of justice. The Wallace Arts Trust is now the Arts House Trust, the latter having taken over the former's assets, and Wallace is no longer a trustee. The eponymous Wallace Arts Awards, which comprised $275,000 of his estimated $2 million a year in fine arts support, are no more. When it comes to patronage there will never be enough, but that is a lot of slack for others to pick up.

Some patrons, such as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, begin as performers and recipients of patronage themselves. Others, such as playwright Sir Roger Hall or filmmaker Garth Maxwell, as creators, and for yet others, such as Dame Theresa Gattung, patronage is part of another agenda altogether (see side bar, p26).

Some people would argue that there shouldn't be any patronage and others that no amount is enough.