Reading Pictures: Rebecca Rice

Art historian and curator Rebecca Rice focuses on Alfred Sharpe’s watercolour painting 'View of the Rock of Maketū, near Drury, NZ', 1880, which is included as an historical reference for Chris Corson-Scott’s body of work 'Landscape Photographs 2013–2018'. She will consider how Pākehā artists, past and present, critically engage with the impact of colonial ‘progress’ on the landscapes of Aotearoa New Zealand.

Dr Rebecca Rice is Curator Historical New Zealand Art at Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Having completed her PhD in 2010 at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, under the supervision of Dr Roger Blackley (1953–2019), she is carrying on the critical project he was instrumental in advancing, to rethink the legacies of Aotearoa New Zealand’s colonial visual archive. She brings her historical knowledge to bear when also writing on and speaking about modern and contemporary practice.

Reading Pictures lunchtime talk series:
Each fortnight an invited speaker responds to a photograph in our current exhibition Tēnei Ao Tūroa – This Enduring World, drawing on their particular insights, interests and knowledge.

[Image: Alfred Sharpe (1836–1908) 'View of the Rock of Maketū, near Drury, NZ', 1880, watercolour, Ref: D-033-007, 610 × 942 mm, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.]