Between 1960 and 1977, Gordon H Brown (b.1931) held several positions related to the visual arts in libraries and Art galleries throughout New Zealand, including the Alexander Turnbull and Hocken Libraries, the Auckland City Art Gallery, Waikato Art Gallery and the Sargeant Gallery.

As an artist Gordon H Brown earned a Diploma in Fine Arts from Canterbury School of Art in 1956 and exhibited with several dealer galleries in the 1960s. He has been included in major surveys of contemporary New Zealand painting at the Auckland City Art Gallery. Since 1977 he has worked as a freelance writer on the visual arts, and has contributed to magazines, periodicals and gallery publications on a wide variety of topics relating to the contemporary New Zealand art scene.

Taken for an exhibition at the New Vision Gallery in 1968, Gordon H Brown describes how the portraits of Colin McCahon came about, "As it is well known, McCahon was never happy when a camera was pointed in his direction. It was an ordeal to be endured as quickly as possible. As there was no time to seek out an ideal background around his Partridge Street house, we simply walked out the back door into the first well-lit area we found, a paved corner of a garden alcove where I took about a dozen photographs in a come-what-may situation. The results turned out better that I had expected."

Awards

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1990	Fanny Evans Fellow, University of Otago
1989	OBE for services to Art History
1974	Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Travel Grant (London and North America)

Published Works

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Colin McCahon: Artist, first published by Reed in 1984, updated 1993
The Ferrier-Watson Collection of Watercolours by John Kinder
New Zealand Painting 1900-1920: Tradition and Departures
New Zealand Painting 1920-1940: Adaptation and Nationalism
New Zealand Painting 1940-1960: Conformity and Dissension
Visions of New Zealand: Artists in a New Land (essay & compiler)
An Introduction to New Zealand Painting 1839-1967 (with Hamish Keith)