2 days ago2 min read

Sue and Karen Gardiner - The Chartwell Trust

Creative visual thinking is fundamental to us all as human beings as we strive to understand our sense of self and the world. Chartwell seeks to deepen understanding about the importance of art and creative thinking for our future and our wellbeing.

The Chartwell Trust was set up in the early 1970s by Robert Gardiner, then a Hamilton businessman and accountant, as a charitable trust to realise Chartwell's vision for wider access to and deeper understanding of creative visual thinking.

The Chartwell Collection was established in 1974 as a privately managed public collection, a new model for its time in New Zealand. From the beginning, all acquisitions went immediately into public gallery care and use.

In this episode I speak to 2 of the Chartwell trust directors Rob Gardiner's daughters Sue and Karen Gardiner, as they celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Chartwell Trust’s involvement with and support of the visual arts in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Karen and Sue share some lovely stories about their early days with their parents Rob and Ev and the man that is Rob Gardiner. We talk about the long 50 year history of Chartwell, how and why Rob started the Chartwell Collection, why the collection eventually came up to Auckland from the Waikato to the Auckland Art Gallery in 1997, why contemporary art makes up the collection and how acquisitions are chosen.

Chartwell's activities and projects are divided into four key domains - Being, Seeing, Making and Thinking. Karen talks about one of the Chartwell outreach projects named Squiggla, which is a cross curricular tool that helps develop creative thinking through the power of mark making https://www.squiggla.org/

Sue takes us through ideas around asking questions in art, how we respond to contemporary art, the affects of viewing art, slow looking and Chartwell's hopes for the next 50 years and she shares the 50th year Chartwell anniversary programme which is running from March 2024 - March 2025.

This is a wonderful conversation which recounts an important part of Aotearoa New Zealand's social and visual art history and celebrates the value of art and the creative process for everyone.