What’s On Display in the The Pop to Present Exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki?
Last Updated on December 11, 2025
The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is New Zealand’s biggest. Hundreds of thousands of people visit annually to enjoy the diverse art experiences from over 15,000 pieces of artwork.
The gallery officially opened in 1888, with Sir George Grey’s gift becoming the core of the early collection. Now, new collections and exhibitions are frequent, showcasing some of the finest art from New Zealand’s best artists as well as huge global names such as Monet, Picasso, and Warhol.
One of the latest and most anticipated collections for 2025 is the Pop to Present Exhibition. Read on to find out when it’s on and what to expect.
The Pop to Present Exhibition
The Pop to Present Exhibition will run from the 8th of November 2025 to the 15th of March 2026. The collection takes some of the most magnificent pieces of American art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Including a total of 52 compelling pieces of art, the concept is to celebrate and intensify the plural artistic tones from the US.
Jackson Pollock’s iconic 1948 drip painting opens the exhibition. The abstract oil painting uses soft colors in a radical new style that celebrates painting for what it is. Closing the exhibition is the magnificent sculptural assemblage by Alabama’s artist Thornton Dial.
Everything else in between is the pinnacle of fine art.
The Artwork You Can Expect to Find
The exhibition will feature the complex, textured paintings of Pattern and Decoration artists. These were key figures during the late 1970s-80s art movement that embraced ornamentation, craft, and non-Western decorative traditions. They challenged the status quo of minimalism that was so common in art at the time to create vibrant, often complex works by artists such as Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff, Robert Zakanitch, Valerie Jaudon, and Kim MacConnel.
You’ll also find the incredibly hyper-detailed canvases by 1970s Photorealists. Again, this was another significant art movement featuring painters like Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, Audrey Flack, Robert Bechtle, Don Eddy, Robert Cottingham, and Malcolm Morley. They would take photographs and use them to produce the highly detailed “more than real” paintings of everyday American life. That includes consumer culture and urban scenes using reflections, chrome, and mundane details to capture something truly incredible.
The exhibition will also feature contemporary artwork exploring questions of identity, power, and representation. What we also love is that there will be 28 pieces of art by African American, Indigenous, and women artists to create an exhibition that respects and represents the diverse backgrounds of recent American art.
Arguably, anybody who knows art, especially American fine art, will agree that the Pop to Present exhibition symbolizes the meaning of it.
The Artists on Display
The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki has selected America’s most prominent past and present fine artists. You can expect to see pieces from:
- Benny Andrews
- Rosalyn Drexler
- Elaine de Kooning
- Willem de Kooning
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Sam Gilliam
- Philip Guston
- Barkley L. Hendricks
- Norman Lewis
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Virgil Ortiz
- Howardena Pindell
- Martin Puryear
- Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
- Mark Rothko
- Kiki Smith
- Clyfford Still
- Cy Twombly
- Andy Warhol
- Jack Whitten
Getting Into The Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
General admission to the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki is free for New Zealand residents and international tourists. Most exhibition entries, including the Pop to Present Exhibition, require a fee.
The prices for this event are (in AUD):
- Adults (New Zealanders): $29.50
- Adults (International tourists): $34.50
- Members: Free
- Concessions: $25.50
- Children 12 and under: Free (must be with an accompanying adult)
You can buy tickets on the day or in advance online.
The Pop to Present exhibition is incredible, and there’s still plenty of time to see it if you plan to go to New Zealand within the next few months!
