The group plan is simple: for a specific period, members contribute an agreed amount each year to a fund for buying significant pieces of art. A buying committee, chosen from the members, makes the purchases. Coming to the end of its five-year run, Hume’s most recent group is one of the smallest she has been in, with 10 members. They each contribute $500 a year to the buying kitty.
AUCKLAND ART FAIR/Supplied
The Art Buying Group visits New Plymouth’s Govett-Brewser gallery. Left to right: Judith Lawson, Rosanne Keys, Sarah Hillman, Sue Hornblow, Sarah Kennedy, Julie Mason, Anne Marie O’Connor, Rosemary Hume, Jacqui Wrathall, Louise Ward.
André Gregory, at left, who plays himself, the sophisticated title character in “My Dinner with André,” and his co-star and co-author, the more down-to-earth Wallace Shawn, donned ski wear under their clothing to stay warm during the Richmond filming in December 1980.
Recently while heading east on Monument Avenue, past scarred granite stubs at four intersections, I remember the Confederate imagery that once crowned those plinths. Then, passing the Jefferson Hotel I wonder: Do hotel visitors still ask about another icon, the lobby’s red-carpeted staircase where Scarlett O’Hara never fell?
Probably not. “Gone With the Wind” is now relegated to the backlot, joining “The Birth of a Nation” as one of Tinseltown’s outdated missteps.
First-time home buyer and entrepreneur Jessie Wong fills her house with locally made art and glass.
Jessie Wong picks up the phone from a tent, where she is eating gingernuts for breakfast because the rain is too heavy to venture outside. The 27-year-old founder of luxury bag brand Yu Mei is holidaying with her friends in Hahei. After the holidays she will be returning to her first home, which she bought with partner Jack Fisher, just before Christmas. Their house is a 1904 character villa that sits on a sheltered hill between Oriental Bay and Roseneath, a short 1.3km walk down the waterfront to Wong’s studio.