South Pacific Museums: Experiments in Culture is a collection of outstanding analyses of museums in the South Pacific, written by cultural, museum and architectural critics, and historians. A series of snapshots introduce the reader to key museums in the region and longer essays explore these museums in broad terms.Over the last 50 years, museums have been regarded by many scholars and cultural critics as archaic institutions far from the cutting edge of cultural innovation. This judgement is being proved wrong across the globe, with innovative museums staking out new territory. Nowhere is this more striking than in the South Pacific where new and redeveloped institutions have included the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum of Australia, the Melbourne Museum, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Museum of Sydney, the Gab Titui Cultural Centre in the Torres Strait, the Auckland Museum, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre.South Pacific Museums make sense of these museums as part of the complex field of heritage, where national economies meet global tourism, cities brand themselves, and indigeneity articulates with colonialism. The effect is one of cultural experimentation. Part One, 'New Museums', introduces three different museums in distinctive national contexts - Te Papa, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the National Museum of Australia. Essays in this part grapple with the role of these museums in the nation at particular historical moments under specific political pressures. Part Two, 'New Knowledges', documents practices and exhibitions at the point of tension between indigenous and non-indigenous interests in the museum. Part three, 'New Experiences', explores the ways in which museums in the South Pacific are producing that ineffable cultural phenomenon - experience.

The material in this book was first used in the catalog issued for the 1953 Loan Exhibition of the Art of the South Pacific Islands, held at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco. 102 reproductions, mostly of carvings.

Despite the incredible artistry and skill evident in the prolific output of New Ireland artists of the late 19th century, their work is still largely unknown. This compelling exhibition catalogue intends to rectify that by presenting a broad panorama of artistic expressions developed in New Ireland, a Pacific island northeast of Papua New Guinea, and home to one of the most sophisticated sculptural traditions in the Pacific region. The works of art featured are of such a quality that the design and craftsmanship would be undeniable in any context. However, the narrow range of time and place are especially important to our understanding of them. There is less than one hundred years between the oldest and newest works on view, yet they represent an artistic tradition that is at least four hundred years old. The story of how these arts flourished before, and even during, the period when contact with the outside world was resulting in a major dislocation of traditional cultural practices, is the subjec

Describes the arts of the people of the Pacific islands both in the past and today.

Introductory guide to the art of the South Pacific ; brief discussion of Australian Aboriginal art pp.3-4. Art -- Oceania. | Art - Carving and engraving. | Art - Sculpture. | Indigenous peoples - Pacific. | Art - Theory and criticism. | Australia. | Pacific Islands.

This volume investigates Pacific collections held in Australian museums, art galleries and archives, and the diverse group of 19th and 20th century collectors responsible for their acquisition. The nineteen essays reveal varied personal and institutional motivations that eventually led to the conservation, preservation and exhibition in Australia of a remarkable archive of Pacific Island material objects, art and crafts, photographs and documents. Hunting the Collectors benchmarks the importance of Pacific Collections in Australia and is a timely contribution to the worldwide renaissance of interest in Oceanic arts and cultures. The essays suggest that the custodial role is not fixed and immutable but fluctuates with the perceived importance of the collection, which in turn fluctuates with the level of national interest in the Pacific neighbourhood. This cyclical rise and fall of Australian interest in the Pacific Islands means many of the valuable early collections in state and later national repositories and institutions have been rarely exhibited or published. But, as the authors note, enthusiastic museum anthropologists, curators, collection managers and university-based scholars across Australia, and worldwide, have persisted with research on material collected in the Pacific. This volume is a very important one for anyone studying the art and material culture of the Pacific. It focuses on collections now in Australia. Even those well versed in museum collections from the Pacific will learn about many important but little-known collectors as well as better-known figures like the anthropologists F. E. Williams and Thomas Farrell, the husband of Queen Emma. This will be a treat for students and specialist alike. —Professor Robert L. Welsch, University of Dartmouth