Over winter on Culture 101 we celebrated the dynamic new public sculpture park offered by driving the new Te Ahu a Turanga: Manawatū-Tararua Highway from Palmerston North to the town Woodville. Enroute to the Hawkes Bay, Woodville was 100 years ago the home of one of our most famous portrait painters Gottfried Lindaeur and is home today to celebrated contemporary artist Maungarongo Te Kawa. .
The Brackenbury Art Gallery is a new fine and applied art space in the historic old Railway Hotel in Woodville. It's run by Turia Brackenbury and Malcolm Braybrook-Stuart, and Malcolm joined us from Woodville on the phone for this week's Regional Wrap..
The Brackenbury features in Art Trail Manawatū, 18-19 October. The town is also home to Rinitawa Art and History, the results of an amalgamation of the Woodville Pioneer Museum and the Lindauer Studio.
Bohemian born, Gottfried Lindauer built a house and studio here in 1890 and lived quietly in Woodville until his death in 1926 aged 87. He is buried in the old Gorge Cemetery beneath the Ruahine Ranges, with a small granite tombstone curved in the shape of an artist's palette.
