An Art-Filled Weekend.

   I feel like I’ve been slacking with my sightseeing lately. So this weekend I tried to do as much as I could in Wellington. I’ve been working on a list of 100 free things to do in Wellington, and I got to cross off a lot on Saturday alone!

   I heard about a protest that was going on Saturday afternoon at Parliament concerning public schooling. I didn’t know too much about the cause, but I went anyways, and it was awesome! I learned a lot while I was there. The government is trying to do a lot of crazy things about the public schools here. New Zealand has one of the best public schooling systems in the world, and the government is trying to introduce charter schools, increase class size, employ unqualified teachers, rank schools on student performance, decrease or delete special education, and the list goes on. All of New Zealand is really against it, so there were protests all over the country today. It was so amazing to be part of a group of people that are so dedicated to what they believe in!

One of many chants.

There were so many of us. 

The main speaker, a principal from a local school.

   Other things I did Saturday include: Old St. Paul’s historic church, the NZ Portrait Gallery, the City Gallery Wellington, and a movie! Old St. Paul’s was absolutely breathtaking.

Can you believe this was all done by hand? Amazing!

   It’s a gothic inspired church built in the 1860s entirely out of native NZ timber. The architecture is beautiful, and it’s hard to imagine it being built by hand so long ago!

Look at those pipes!

Old St. Paul's apparently has an alliance with the US Marines.

   The Portrait Gallery was featuring the paintings of Marianne Muggeridge. There were paintings spanning her 30-40 year career. It was really cool to see the progression of her style.

The gallery. So artsy.

My favorite painting.

   The City Gallery had artwork from a number of different artists, but my favorite was definitely Len Lye. His exhibit, “Kaleidoscope,” had some of his kinetic sculptures as well as films. They were amazing! Cameras weren’t allowed in the gallery, so I couldn’t get any photos. I also heard the curator talk about some of the pieces. It was neat to get an inside perspective and hear some stories about the artwork. After the curator’s presentation, there was a Len Lye movie screening accompanied by live jazz music. Since the bulk of his films were produced around the 30s, they either didn’t have sound or had music. It was so cool, I wanna see more!


Here's one of Len Lye's videos. He made it in 1958 by scratching marks onto small black film strips.

   Saturday night, some friends and I went to see Jack the Giant Slayer. It was so good! We really just went for the popcorn though!

   I didn’t accomplish as much sightseeing as I had hoped Sunday. My foot has been hurting a lot lately, but I have to walk everywhere, so I can’t very well stay off it. I rested Sunday, so hopefully it gets better!