Christina Barton is the director of the Adam Art Gallery Te Pataka Toi at Victoria University of Wellington, where she has taught art history since 1995. She is a respected art historian, writer and curator who has worked at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including the major Billy Apple retrospective at Auckland Art Gallery in 2015. Her writing has been published widely, and she has contributed as an editor of journals Antic and Reading Room, and volumes including the collected art writings of Wystan Curnow.
'This is scholarship of consummate thoroughness and insight on an important, under-examined artistic career. The accomplished quality of writing combines a prodigious ability to articulate detailed historical information with a frequently affecting personal voice. Christina Barton's deep and long acquaintance with her subject lends convincing authority to her account; indeed, it is difficult to imagine another writer as competent, informed and motivated enough to fill this major gap in the literature of postwar art.' Thomas Crow, Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, New York University