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At the recent opening of Jan Nigro's exhibition 'Encounters & Journeys:a survey 1950s - 2010', Ron Brownson, Senior Curator New Zealand and Pacific Art at the Auckland Art Gallery publically thanked Jan Nigro for her gift of two works of art.

Ron Brownson said "Jan Nigro presented two exceptional artworks to the people of Auckland. I selected the two pieces and she, most generously, presented them to Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki."
 
The painting is 'Summer Encounter' oil on canvas from 1972-1973. The other gift was a large exhibition drawing entitled "A man of the seventies." Jan drew the work in 1974.

"I showed this print out of it to a colleague this afternoon, I asked him what immediately came to mind, and their reply was ‘Pop star’, ‘Mr Lee Grant’. Cocky, confident, sexy, sinuous, a girly sort of boyish mannishness. He’s a testosterone squeezer. If you were to do a survey of all the other drawings made in New Zealand in 1974, you then you added in all the paintings made in New Zealand during 1974. You would not find any work that was in any way as sexualised as this one is.
 
"Jan has always got her figure’s pose, their gesture, their clothing or lack of it, their contraposto, their sexiness. Sometimes, as in some of the paintings and drawings in this exhibition, Jan makes males less obviously masculine and more overtly feminine. It is one of her many gifts – to render gender and sexuality as what it is fluid, mobile, motile.
 
"So, Jan, thank you for asking me to express the City’s great thanks to you. For your work, for your contribution to New Zealand’s art and for your 74 years of professional painting. Your vocation has been your life as an artist and people have always been your art’s focus. Congratulations from Auckland Art Gallery."

Jan Nigro's survey show will run unto October 2nd at Jane Sanders ART Agent gallery, Level 1, Blackett's Building, cnr Shortland and Queen Streets, Auckland. www.artagent.co.nz