The Hundertwasser Art Centre opened in 2022, more than two decades after the Austrian artist sketched designs for it during one of his many visits to Northland. The building is unmistakably his: irregular floors, undulating walls, ceramic columns, a forest planted on the roof. It houses the only permanent Hundertwasser collection outside Vienna and the Wairau Maori Art Gallery.
It is the single biggest reason to spend an afternoon in Whangarei. The temporary exhibitions vary in quality, but the building itself is the main attraction — an oddity dropped into a provincial New Zealand town that has divided locals and drawn visitors in roughly equal measure since opening.