Roundup: New Zealand's newest gallery set to take center stage in modern art world

New Zealand's first museum dedicated to a single artist was hailed by a government minister Friday as one of the country's "iconic" buildings and a global player in the modern art world.

The rippling stainless steel facade of the Len Lye Centre -- part of New Plymouth's Govett-Brewster Art Gallery -- is to house the collection of one of the great masters of the 20th Century, Len Lye.

Government ministers and international media are gathering in the city on the west coast of the North Island ahead of the building's official opening Saturday.

New Zealander Len Lye (1901-1980) first made his name in Europe, in the ranks of the Surrealist movement, exhibiting his avant- garde films alongside works by Salvador Dali, Miro and Man Ray.

But he spent much of his life in New York, where he moved in 1944, continuing to make films and winning acclaim for his kinetic sculptures, motorized metal contraptions that vibrated and spun and clashed.

The sculptures, which were first exhibited in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1961, are feats of engineering as much as art and engineers have been brought in to construct some of the gigantic works.

The government has been a major funder of the 17-million-NZ- dollar (11.18 million U.S. dollars) Len Lye Centre, which is expected to draw modern art aficionados from around the world.

Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Maggie Barry said at a press conference in the center Friday that the building, with its reflective shimmering faade, was "one of New Zealand's iconic buildings."

"I'm blown away by it," Barry said.

The building would be a major draw for visitors away from the established tourist destinations.

"What this space offers visitors ... it's adding a richness, a diversity and depth to the experience," she said.

New Plymouth mayor Andrew Judd told Xinhua that the city would be promoting the Len Lye Center in China through its sister-city link with Kunming, capital of Yunnan Province.

The city would also look at promoting the center to Chinese engineering students as a place to study their craft.

"These works are all made by engineers so there's a great opportunity to study how they were produced," said Judd.

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery director Simon Rees said at the press conference that the center was already cementing relationships with other international modern art galleries, such as the Tate Modern in London and MOMA.

The centre will house 19,000 items left by Lye on his death in 1980 to the Len Lye Foundation -- to be kept in the care of the Govett-Brewster -- of which about two thirds have been catalogued.

Lye became a U.S. citizen, but he returned to New Zealand in 1977 for an exhibition of his work at the Govett-Brewster, which he described as "the swingingest gallery in the Antipodes."

Lye acknowledged he would never see the realization of many of his ideas.

"My work, I think, is going to be pretty good for the 21st Century," Lye famously said. "Why the 21st is simply that there won't be the means until then -- I don't think there'll be the means to have what I want."

Foundation chairman and local businessman and engineer John Matthews has been instrumental in bringing Lye's works to reality in the years since Lye died.

One work underway for the center, "Blade," will be made from the world's biggest piece of titanium -- specially forged at a mill in China -- standing upright and ringing when struck like a gong.

Matthews is currently overseeing what will be the world's largest kinetic sculpture, which will feature in a park on the outskirts of New Plymouth.

"Sun, Land and Sea" will see giant "serpents" ringing with static electricity in the world's largest piece of kinetic art. Endi