Arnold Manaaki Wilson

Ngāi Tuhoe & Te Arawa
Sculptor

View Arnold Wilson citation, presentation & interview 2007 Icon Awards

Arnold Manaaki Wilson was born in 1928 in the North Island in the isolated Bay of Plenty township Ruatoki. Arnold won a scholarship to attend Wesley College in Paerata and went on to study art at the University of Auckland's Elam School of Fine Arts. Graduating in 1955, Arnold was the first Māori to gain a Diploma in Fine Arts, with first class honours in sculpture.

Arnold went to Teachers Training College and there followed a successful and long career in art education, leading a cultural revival of Māori art in schools and in the community. Along with other contemporary artists such as Ralph Hotere, Marilyn Webb and Sandy Adsett, he questioned the orthodoxies and practices of both Māori and Pākehā art traditions. Arnold does not work from a single cultural base. With Māori and Scottish ancestry, he draws upon his bicultural background to produce his work. As a sculptor he has experimented with many traditional and non-traditional materials, working with metal, vivid paint and wood in various forms. He has been one of the most important mentors of a Modernist Māori art movement within New Zealand.

Arnold has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and overseas including Recent New Zealand Sculpture (1968) at the Auckland City Art Gallery, the South Pacific Festival of Arts (1976) in Rotorua, Ten Māori Artists (1978) Manawatu Art Gallery in Palmerston North, Haongia te Taonga (1986) Waikato Art Museum in Hamilton, Kohia Ko Taikaka Anake (1990) National Art Gallery in Wellington and the United States tour of Te Waka Toi: Contemporary Māori Art from New Zealand (1992).

Arnold received a Nga Tohu a Ta Kingi Ihaka/Sir King Ihaka Award from Te Waka Toi in 2001 for new directions in contemporary Maori art.

Since his retirement from the position of Director of the Cross-Cultural Community Involvement Art Programme in the Department of Education, he has continued his educational role as kaumātua and advisor to a number of public art programmes. He worked for many years to establish the Awataha urban marae complex in Auckland and is still there today as kaumātua working with young urban Māori.

Arnold Wilson lives in Auckland.

Arnold Manaaki Wilson has been a major presence on the contemporary Māori art scene for half a century. He was among the Māori art educators working in Northland who joined forces in 1958 to present (in Auckland) the first exhibition of contemporary art by Māori artists. The movement pioneered by those artists Ralph Hotere, Katerina Mataira, Muru Walters, Selwyn Wilson and Arnold Wilson has long since burgeoned into a thriving and distinctive enterprise, drawing in hundreds of gifted Māori artists, involving curators, writers, dealers and public and private collectors, and delighting untold numbers of viewers at home and abroad. As ambassador, advocate, agent provocateur, educator, and exemplar, Arnold Wilson has played a pivotal role in the positioning of such art in national and international forums.

Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Director Art and Collection Services, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Arts Foundation Governor