AUCKLAND.- Auckland Art Gallery is packing art into suitcases and taking it to schools in a unique new education programme. Artists will be invited to create new works inside suitcases that educators can take to classrooms and engage children with art. Marylyn Mayo intern Renee Tanner will spend the next three months developing and fundraising for the Art Suitcase programme.

“There will be an element of surprise as the suitcase opens and out pops art of all shapes and sizes,” she says. “This will be a more interactive experience than we can offer at the gallery because some of the works will be able to be touched and rearranged.”

The outreach programme will ensure the public has continued access to art after the main gallery on Kitchener St closes for major renovations later this year. Auckland Art Gallery will continue to operate out of the New Gallery on Lorne St until the main building reopens in 2010. Education curator Roger Taberner says the suitcase has a proud tradition in art dating back to Marcel Duchamp’s “portable museums” in 1935.

“Art Suitcase builds on the success of the gallery’s Art Studio, where 400 children a week create art inspired by works in the gallery,” he says.

He hopes Art Suitcase will reach up to 150 children a week around greater Auckland. Otago University graduate Renee Tanner has an MA in art curatorship from Melbourne University and was assistant curator for Asian art at the National Gallery of Victoria. The Marylyn Mayo internships were established last year through the generosity of Queensland academic Dr John Mayo in memory of his late wife Marylyn, a New Zealander with a lifelong interest in the arts, education, law and health.