“Great art goes 50:50 with great architecture” - Len Lye

The Len Lye Centre opened in New Plymouth in July 2015. Located alongside and accessible through the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, the Centre is Aotearoa New Zealand’s first facility devoted to a single artist.

Visitors to the Len Lye Centre are able to move between it and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, and gain a sense of both the life, work and significance of Len Lye alongside the Govett-Brewster’s contemporary art exhibitions and events.

The Centre features exhibitions of Lye’s work, spanning sculptures, films, paintings and photographs – alongside historical and contemporary works and items to give visitors a rich understanding of his unique story. A state-of-the-art Len Lye Centre Cinema regularly screens Lye’s film works and documentaries of his life and work alongside exhibition and general art-house programming, while the Todd Energy Learning Centre offers school, after-school, family and lifelong learning classes to put Len’s ideas into practice.

Backstory

The New Plymouth connection began in April 1980 when the artist, the Len Lye Foundation and the New Plymouth City Council, entered into a Deed of Gift. Through that Deed, Lye transferred the ownership and copyright of all the works owned by him at that time to the Foundation, for the public benefit of the people of New Zealand. The artist died a few weeks later.

In that Deed the Council accepted the responsibility of providing for the storage, access and display of the works in New Plymouth. Since 1980, the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, which is owned by the Council, has performed this task, in association with the Lye Foundation.