The exhibition attracted controversial attention when president of the Royal Academy of Arts Alfred Munnings in his 1949 radio-broadcast valedictory speech in 1949 attacked Modernism, identifying Moore as an offending artist.
[2] For the next four and a half years as director at Auckland he was innovative in exhibitions and expanding activities of the gallery in other arts by inaugurating poetry readings, concerts and summer schools, lecturing and broadcaster.
Westbrook oversaw an 'unusual exhibition' in July 1952, where drawings for the top 16 entrants in the Sea Spray magazine 20' LWL fast cruising yacht design international competition were displayed in the gallery.
[5][6] In 1955 with Daryl Lindsay’s impending retirement as director of the National Gallery of Victoria, Westbrook was invited to apply for the position and he was appointed on 1 January 1956, aged forty-one years,[7] on a salary of £1,868 p.a.
[11] Study leave on a Carnegie Fellowship in 1965 led him in 1967 to establish the NGV voluntary guide service as an interactive and friendly means of introducing audiences to art in institutions which they may find daunting.
[15] The first exhibition in the new building, The Field, is still regarded as historic and influential for breaking with nationalistic Modernist Australian art to represent emerging artists working in challenging international styles.
[16] He proposed in a 1962 interview that the Centre in St Kilda Road would provide "information, stimulation and relaxation for citizens" and that from it a huge creative effort by artists would result in a building designed for its best display, adding that "...it's an ‘instrument’ which we are leaning to play,"[2] his role being like that of an orchestral conductor.