It’s shifted from low-traffic Earl St in the CBD, where it’s been for 23 years, to a high-profile position which also offers off-street parking.
Milford Galleries director Stephen Higginson, who also owns the firm’s sister gallery in Dunedin, says everything about the new location is better.
"What we’re able to do in Queenstown for the first time is show the breadth and extent of our business and to do so in a manner that’s coherent.
"So, for example, we’re able to display major sculpture for the first time because we just haven’t had that capacity given the low ceiling in the previous location."
Higginson says the new floor area’s almost 50% bigger, but it’s effectively better than that because the upstairs space in Earl St was rarely visited — "it was really dysfunctional".
The gallery, he points out, now has three spaces that are pliable and separate from each other.
Each space could show a separate artist’s work, or else two of the spaces could, or all three — "that sort of thing we’ve never had before".
Higginson believes the new space reflects the resort’s place now in New Zealand’s cultural and social fabric, and to celebrate this week’s opening he’s staging what he claims is "the most important exhibition ever mounted in Queenstown".
The exhibition, running till the end of next month, is entitled ‘Treasures’, and every work on the walls is by a legend or a great of NZ art, he says — "we’ve got Lisa Reihana, Sir Toss Woollaston, Ralph Hotere, Paul Dibble, the list goes on and on, it’s a who’s who".
"One of the problems I perceive of Queenstown is most of what’s available are pictures, they’re not art at all.
"They get presented as if they’re art and people get tricked into thinking they’re art when they’re of course not."
The official opening of the newly located gallery is on Saturday from 2 till 6pm.
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