{{Short description|British-born Australian artist, curator and gallery director}} {{Use dmy dates|date=November 2021}} {{Use Australian English|date=June 2020}}
'''Dr Eric Westbrook''' {{post-nominals|country=GBR|CB}} (29 September 1915 – 2005) was a British-born Australian artist, curator and gallery director of Auckland Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Victoria.
==Early life and education== Eric Westbrook was born in Peckham, south-east London on 29 September 1915. In childhood, he accompanied is father, a businessman in the textile industry, on his travels in Europe and waiting for him in museums, an experience which made a lasting impression on his love of art and of galleries.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|url=https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/obituary-dr-eric-westbrook-cb-1915-2005/|title=Obituary: Dr Eric Westbrook, CB 1915–2005|website=National Gallery of Victoria|access-date=16 January 2020}}</ref><ref name=":2" />
He was taught by Walter Sickert and Mark Gertler in painting courses at art schools including Battersea, Clapham and Westminster School of Art, and supported his studies by working as a telephone operator. Despite being scholarship winner, he decided he could make a better contribution as a connoisseur than as a painter, and went to Paris in 1934, at age nineteen, to tour its galleries and to see contemporary art.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=http://www.portrait.gov.au/people/eric-westbrook-1915/|title=Eric Westbrook, b. 1915|website=National Portrait Gallery|access-date=16 January 2020}}</ref>
During World War II, and after graduating from art school, he was rejected for service in the infantry on the grounds of 'puniness'<ref name=":0" /> and instead worked in intelligence liaison<ref name=":1" /> and army education.<ref name=":2" /> In 1944 he met his first wife, domestic science teacher Ingrid Nystrom, in an air-raid shelter.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/driven-by-an-artistic-passion-20051111-gdmf5p.html|title=Driven by an artistic passion|date=11 November 2005|website=Sydney Morning Herald|language=en|access-date=16 January 2020}}</ref> He took up art teaching after the war for the London County Council before being appointed art master at Ardingly College, Sussex. This led to work for the Arts Council of Great Britain as one of four guide lecturers touring Britain with art exhibitions, and in another role he set up art education for the army and advised the YMCA Youth Clubs in Britain.<ref name=":1" />
==Curatorship== Westbrook was approached by the retiring director of the Wakefield Art Gallery (est. 1934, and since 2011 named The Hepworth Wakefield) in West Yorkshire in 1946 to apply for the position. Successful, he became Britain’s youngest gallery director. During his tenure he organised a retrospective of the work of Henry Moore who was born 60 km from Wakefield. The exhibition attracted controversial attention when president of the Royal Academy of Arts Alfred Munnings in his 1949 radio-broadcast valedictory speech in 1949 attacked Modernism, identifying Moore as an offending artist.<ref name=":2" /> The material Westbrook generated for the show was taken up for a British Council European tour of Moore's work. This led three years later to Westbrook being invited to join the Fine Arts Department of the British Council as chief exhibitions officer, arranging traveling exhibitions on British to most European countries, and twice in charge of the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale. While in Greece during one of these tours, he was informed that Auckland City Art Gallery was seeking a new director. In 1952 he successfully applied and flew back to England through America to visit galleries there.<ref name=":2">{{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=De Berg, Hazel, 1913-1984. (Interviewer) | title=Eric Westbrook interviewed by Hazel de Berg in the Hazel de Berg collection | publication-date=1962 | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/19237946 | accessdate=16 January 2020 }}</ref>
For the next four and a half years as director at Auckland he was innovative in exhibitions and expanding activities of the gallery in other arts by inaugurating poetry readings, concerts and summer schools, lecturing and broadcaster. In recognition, the Art Galleries and Museums Association of New Zealand appointed him an honorary life member in 1959.
Westbrook oversaw an 'unusual exhibition' in July 1952, where drawings for the top 16 entrants in the Sea Spray magazine 20' LWL fast cruising yacht design international competition were displayed in the gallery.<ref>{{Cite news |date=26 July 1952 |title=Designers Compete on Ideas in Yacht Design |work=The New Zealand Herald}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=6 June 1952 |title=Display of Yacht Designs at Art Gallery |work=The New Zealand Herald}}</ref>
== National Gallery of Victoria == In 1955 with Daryl Lindsay’s impending retirement as director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Westbrook was invited to apply for the position and he was appointed on 1 January 1956, aged forty-one years,<ref>{{Citation | author1=Hoff, Ursula | author2=Plant, Margaret, 1940- | title=National gallery of Victoria | publication-date=1968 | publisher=Cheshire | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/22960214 | accessdate=16 January 2020 }}</ref> on a salary of £1,868 p.a.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71887700 |title=Art Gallery's new director |newspaper=The Argus (Melbourne) |location=Victoria, Australia |date=11 June 1955 |access-date=16 January 2020 |page=7 |via=Trove }}</ref> ($A220,000.00 at 2018 value).<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/australiacompare/result.php?year_source=1955&amount=1868&year_result=2019|title=Measuring worth: a service for calculating relative worth over time.|last=The MeasuringWorth Foundation|date=|website=|archive-url=|archive-date=|access-date=}}</ref> Negotiating with a new Victorian Government, he worked to restructure the gallery and increase staffing, raising the profile of the Gallery through his lectures and on the media. He supported the establishment in 1957 of the Victorian Public Galleries Group (later named Regional Galleries Association of Victoria).
A period of travel in Europe 1957 enabled Westbrook to inspect museums in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, following which in 1960 he and architect Roy Grounds toured 122 galleries and museums and other cultural buildings in Europe and America,<ref>{{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=Grounds, Roy, Sir, 1905-1981 | author3=National Art Gallery and Cultural Centre Building Committee (Melbourne, Vic.) | title=National Art Gallery and Cultural Centre : report, being a summary of investigations made in Europe and America during 1960 with recommendations | publication-date=1960 | publisher=National Art Gallery and Cultural Centre Building Committee | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34422170 }}</ref> as they planned for the removal of the gallery from Melbourne’s public library to a new complex at Southbank and St Kilda Road and the development there of an Arts Centre.<ref>{{Citation | author1=Gray, Emily Yolanda | title=Spirit and purpose : Eric Westbrook and the modernization of the National Gallery of Victoria (1956-73) | publication-date=2009 | publisher=University of Melbourne | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/36382946 }}</ref> Study leave on a Carnegie Fellowship in 1965 led him in 1967 to establish the NGV voluntary guide service as an interactive and friendly means of introducing audiences to art in institutions which they may find daunting.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71771569 |title=Art demands right setting |newspaper=The Argus (Melbourne) |location=Victoria, Australia |date=15 December 1956 |access-date=16 January 2020 |page=3 |via=Trove }}</ref> In a 1965 interview for a ''Walkabout'' magazine profile, he asserted an aim to make art and all forms of culture more accessible.<ref>{{Citation | title=Profile: Eric Westbrook | journal=Walkabout | publication-date=1970 | volume=36 | issue=3 | pages=50–51 | issn=0043-0064 }}</ref>
In 1968 construction of the new building for the National Gallery of Victoria was completed, though the design,<ref>Goad, P. (2003). The Building. National Gallery of Victoria.</ref> met with the disapproval of some commentators, including art patron John Reed of the Museum of Modern Art Australia, who ridiculed it as "an unmitigated disaster."<ref name=":3" /> The process was commemorated by Westbrook in ''Birth of a Gallery'' which incorporates a transcript of conversations between the director and architect Grounds.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article107068256 |title=VICTORIAN GALLERY MEMENTO |newspaper=The Canberra Times |location=Australian Capital Territory, Australia |date=17 August 1968 |access-date=16 January 2020 |page=13 |via=Trove }}</ref> The first exhibition in the new building, ''The Field'', is still regarded as historic and influential for breaking with nationalistic Modernist Australian art to represent emerging artists working in challenging international styles.<ref>{{Citation | author1=National Gallery of Victoria | author2=Ellwood, Tony, (author.) | author3=Rozentals, Beckett, (author.) | author4=Homewood, David, (author.) | author5=Lettau, Paris, (author.) | author6=Boddy, Janet Dawson, 1935-, (author,) | author7=Bell, Jenny, (author.) | author8=National Gallery of Victoria, (issuing body.) | title=The Field revisited | publication-date=2018 | publisher=National Gallery of Victoria | isbn=978-1-925432-48-0}}</ref> He proposed in a 1962 interview that the Centre in St Kilda Road would provide "information, stimulation and relaxation for citizens" and that from it a huge creative effort by artists would result in a building designed for its best display, adding that "...it's an ‘instrument’ which we are leaning to play,"<ref name=":2" /> his role being like that of an orchestral conductor.<ref name=":4">{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article110334867 |title=Conductor in the galleries |newspaper=The Canberra Times |location=Australian Capital Territory, Australia |date=31 July 1970 |access-date=16 January 2020 |page=3 |via=Trove }}</ref>
In 1970 he was appointed president of UNESCO Visual Arts Committee,<ref name=":4" /> but his directorship sometimes met with controversy; he was instrumental in the Gallery becoming the first in Australia to have a photography department,<ref>{{Citation | author1=National Gallery of Victoria | author2=Crombie, Isobel | author3=Van Wyk, Susan | title=2nd sight : Australian photography in the National Gallery of Victoria | publication-date=2002 | publisher=National Gallery of Victoria | isbn=978-0-7241-0211-2 }}</ref> eventually with its own curator Jennie Boddington;<ref>Palmer, D., & Jolly, M. (2014). Networking the tradition: Curating photography in Australia. ''Photofile'', (95), 48.</ref> in 1973 Westbrook mounted a large retrospective of work by socialist artist Noel Counihan to criticism from the staff and trustees on grounds that it either was insufficiently 'modern' or that its subversive nature might bring the gallery into disrepute, but Professor (Sir) Joseph Burke's support in opening the exhibition carried weight with most trustees, leading to Counihan's acceptance as a major Australian artist;<ref>Bernard Smith, 'Counihan, Noel Jack (1913–1986)', in {{Citation | author1=Serle, Geoffrey, 1922-1998, (editor.) | author2=Ritchie, John, 1941-2006, (editor.) | author3=Nairn, Bede, (editor.) | author4=Pike, Douglas, 1908-1974, (editor.) | author5=Cunneen, Christopher, 1940-, (editor.) | author6=Langmore, Dianne, (editor.) | author7=Bennet, Darryl, (editor.) | author8=Nolan, Melanie, (editor.) | title=Australian dictionary of biography | publication-date=1966 | publisher=Melbourne University Press; London; New York : Cambridge University Press | isbn=978-0-522-84121-3 }}</ref> and an exhibition of Leonard French, who was then Westbrook's exhibitions officer met the disapproval of Professor Bernard Smith and his Antipodeans.<ref name=":3" />
== Late career == Westbrook retired from the National Gallery of Victoria in 1975 and until 1980 he headed the Victorian Ministry for the Arts, moving then with his second wife non-objective painter Dawn Sime to Castlemaine. There he resumed his practice as an artist and supported the Castlemaine Art Gallery and Museum<ref>{{Citation | author1=Larkin, John | title=Art and survival. (Interview with Eric Westbrook) | journal=Age | publication-date=25 September 1980 | issue=25 September 1980 | pages=11 | issn=0312-6307 }}</ref> for which he had formerly provided advice on buildings collections while in his role of Director at the NGV.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Castlemaine Art Gallery & Historical Museum : history & collections|date=2013|others=Geoff Hannon|isbn=978-0-9807831-9-3|location=Castlemaine, Australia|oclc=869312119}}</ref>
== Awards ==
* 1974: Honorary Doctorate of Laws, Monash University * 1974: Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters * 1981: Companion of the Order of the Bath * 1981: Ordre des Palmes Académiques
==Publications== * {{Citation | author1=Sime, Dawn | author2=Westbrook, Eric | author3=Charles Nodrum Gallery | title=Dawn Sime & Eric Westbrook | publication-date=2007 | publisher=Charles Nodrum Gallery | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/228343834 }} * {{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=Victoria. Council of Adult Education | author3=National Gallery of Victoria | title=The Australian vision | publication-date=1960 | publisher=National Gallery of Victoria | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/35373966}} * {{Citation | author1=Duldig, Karl | author2=Ruskin, Pamela | title=Karl Dulding sculpture : Vienna, Singapore, Melbourne | publication-date=1966 | publisher=Cheshire | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/12740837 }} * {{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=National Gallery of Victoria | title=The Sistine Chapel : a photographic exploration | publication-date=1990 | publisher=[National Gallery of Victoria?] | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/33388779 }} * {{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=Quality of life (1970 : Sherbrooke, Vic.) | author3=Westbrook, Eric | title=The quality of life : papers delivered at a conference, November 28-29th, 1970, YUNA-CIVIS | publication-date=1970 | publisher=[YUNA-CIVIS] | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/34578502 }} * {{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=National Gallery of Victoria | title=6 Australian painters | publication-date=1961 | publisher=National Gallery of Victoria | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/35374101 }} * {{Citation | author1=International Community Education Conference (3rd : 1979 : Melbourne, Vic.) | author2=Victoria. Ministry for the Arts | title=Artists catalogue | publication-date=1979 | publisher=Victorian Ministry for the Arts | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/7902407 }} * {{Citation | author1=Sellbach, Udo | author2=Dodds, Peter | author3=Council of Adult Education | author4=Education Dept | author5=National Gallery of Victoria | title=Printmakers | publication-date=1967 | publisher=[National Gallery of Victoria | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/208202021 }} * {{Citation | author1=Philip Morris Arts Grant | author2=Westbrook, Eric | author3=Mollison, James, 1931- | author4=Philip Morris (Australia) Arts Grant | title=The Philip Morris Arts Grant First Annual Exhibition : 1974 | publication-date=1974 | publisher=Philip Morris (Australia)] | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8726831}} * {{Citation | author1=National Gallery of Victoria | author2=Cogniat, Raymond | author3=Kunstler, Charles | title=Pierre Bonnard, 1867-1947 | publication-date=1971 | publisher=National Gallery of Victoria | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/152745698 }} * {{Citation | author1=Westbrook, Eric | author2=Brown, Albert | author3=National Gallery of Victoria | author4=Westbrook, Eric | author5=Brown, Albert | title=The perceptive eye representing five photographers from Kodak Collection | publication-date=1968 | publisher=[National Gallery of Victoria] | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/25294070 }} * {{Citation | author1=Williams, Fred | author2=McClelland Gallery | title=The etchings of Fred Williams at the McClelland Gallery | publication-date=1975 | publisher=McClelland Gallery | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/10340035 }} * {{Citation | author1=National Gallery of Victoria | author2=Westbrook, Eric | author3=Heathcote, Christopher, 1959- | title=1956 Melbourne | publication-date=2000 | publisher=National Gallery of Victoria | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/33389651 }} * {{Citation | author1=Murray-Smith, Stephen, 1922-1988 | author2=Turner, Ian, 1922-1978 | title=Overland 76/77 : Ian Turner memorial number | publication-date=1979 | publisher=Stephen Murray-Smith | url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/230159612 }}
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Westbrook, Eric}} Category:Australian curators Category:1915 births Category:2005 deaths Category:20th-century Australian artists Category:British emigrants to Australia Category:British Army personnel of World War II Category:People associated with the Auckland Art Gallery