Bishop Museum showcases Polynesian anthropologist

HONOLULU (AP) — Bishop Museum is paying tribute to the first Polynesian to receive widespread recognition for his research and scholarship on Pacific cultures.

The Honolulu museum's newly renovated Pacific Hall will showcase Sir Peter H. Buck, also known as Te Rangi Hiroa.

Buck served as Bishop Museum's director for 15 years starting in 1936.

As director, he focused on the anthropology of Pacific people, their origins, language and material culture.

More here.

Reviving culture with the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

The renovated TMAG has more space dedicated to telling the story of Tasmania's Indigenous people than ever before, and while there are still the stories of our state's history in the museum, there are also projects to bring the cultures of the past back to life.

More here.

Review: Chiefs and Governors: Art and Power in Fiji, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Necklaces made from whale ivory and fish hooks of ivory, pearl and turtle shell were part of a lavish system of gifts between Fiji’s chiefs and their first British governor in the nineteenth century.


The importance of the sea resonates through the exhibition: whales, turtles, pearls, shells and coconuts. Jewellery and breastplates were made using an ingenious system designed for building canoes. 

More here.

Jared Diamond Sued

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, is being sued by two Papua, New Guinea, men who claim the award-winning science writer lied about their lives to prove that tribal culture is violent.

More here

Repatriation News

Lots in the news this last week relating to myriad repatriation issues:

Massacred Yaqui Remains Returned
Human remains at the American Museum of Natural History from a gruesome 1902 massacre site are repatriated.

Jim Thorpe's Final Resting Place
A discussion about whether to return Thorpe's earthly remains from PA to his natal OK.

Maori Bones Return Home
The bones of twelve maori people which have lain in boxes in the National Museum and Gallery of Wales in Cardiff since the 1920s have been handed over to New Zealand at a special ceremony.

Hawaiian Skulls Returned
Having retrieved 22 iwi po'o, or Hawaiian skulls, from Stockholm's antiquities museum over the weekend, a Native Hawaiian delegation arrived in Boston yesterday to take possession of eight more from Harvard University's anatomical collection.

Directorship Open: Anthropology Museum at the University of Queensland

From a University of Queensland email circular:

Applications are invited for the position of Director of the Anthropology Museum at The University of Queensland. The appointment is part of the University’s initiative to promote the Museum nationally and internationally in the areas of public exhibition, community engagement, research and teaching.

The Role The successful applicant will be an advocate for the Museum and its collection, and will supervise new engagements with potential funding bodies and supporters of appropriate public exhibitions. The Director will be responsible for managing the collection, liaising with the University and relevant community groups to initiate research projects, and building the public profile of the collection through digital and related technologies.

The Person The successful applicant will possess a higher degree in anthropology, archaeology, museum studies, or related fields. Experience with collections and/or related research activities in Aboriginal Australia and/or Melanesia and the broader Pacific is highly desirable.

Learn more about the position here.

Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific wins Shep Book Award

From a Textile Society of America press release:

The Textile Society of America is pleased to announce the recipient of this year’s R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award, Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific by Roy W. Hamilton and B. Lynne Milgram, editors, published in Los Angeles by The Fowler Museum at UCLA. Chosen from a field of 17 nominated titles, this book exemplifies the goal of the award to recognize exceptional scholarship in the field of ethnic textile studies.

While many books earned high scores and strong positive comments from the committee, ultimately Material Choices was selected for the stellar quality of field research and its vital contribution of new material to the field. Two books tied for second place: The Worldwide History of Dress by Patricia Rieff Anawalt, published by Thames & Hudson Ltd., and Uzbek Embroidery in the Nomadic Tradition, by Kate Fitz Gibbon and Andrew Hale, published by Art Media Resources, Ltd.

Material Choices reminds us in an elegant and erudite manner that before cotton and artificial fibers subsumed the textile field, societies used a range of other materials from bast to leaf fibers. Many of the customs associated with these fibers remained embedded within those societies, but over time their use largely dwindled and only marginalized segments of populations retained their use. Today these weavers are reinterpreting their positions in terms of ethnic, gender and national identities given the new opportunities presented by globalization. This book takes these textiles directly to the heart of current cultural studies and anthropology, fields which are re-examining such marginalized segments of a society.

It is a thought-provoking perch from which to view what follows in the book, with essays written by Asia-Pacific specialists of each of the eight regions covered. The entries examine the traditional functions and modes of production within a society and then trace responses to globalization within the society. They are amazing in their variety. In some instances there is a turn to considering these textiles as more “authentic” statements of a larger culture and a movement to bring these onto an expanded scene as national identity markers. In other cases women have seized newly available opportunities to better the position of their gender. In still other cases women continue local production out of a sense of pride, but know their efforts are uneconomic.

The book also provides a botanical overview of the fibers in question, a needed review considering how few of these are documented in readily available literature. This is because once the apparent usefulness of bast and leaf fibers declined, contemporary scientific studies also faded.•

Given annually to a publication judged to be the best book of the year in the field of ethnic textile studies, the award consists of a cash prize, funded by an endowment established by R. L. Shep in 2000. The endowment is administered by the Textile Society of America, through an Awards Committee comprised of members Mattibelle Gittinger, Barbara Sloan and Chair, Victoria Rivers.

A formal presentation of this award, along with that of the 2006 R.L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award winner, will take place at the Textile Society of America’s 11th Biennial Symposium in Honolulu, Hawaii, September 24-27, 2008.

NOMINATIONS FOR THE 2008 R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award WILL BE ACCEPTED IN MARCH 2009. For additional information visit the TSA website at http://www.textilesociety.org

•Text prepared by Victoria Rivers, Chair, R. L. Shep Ethnic Textiles Book Award Committee

MIA Curatorship Goes to Africanist

It seems that the number of museum anthropologists filling curatorships in major art museums continues to grow. As reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has hired Jan-Lodewijk Grootaers to head its department of African, Oceanic, and Native American Art starting June 9." Grootaers is a University of Chicago-trained anthropologist who has worked among the Zande of the Central African Republic. Find the story here.

Oceanic Art Symposium

Announcement: Oceanic Art Symposium

Organised by the Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VKS)
Port Vila, Vanuatu, 6–8 May 2008
Final date for Registration Monday 14 April 2008

The first Oceanic Art Symposium on “Oceanic Art Today: Status, Production and Tendencies” provides a space for international art scholars and museum professionals to share new ideas about creative traditions and contemporary arts practice in the Pacific region today. The symposium, organised by PIMA and the VKS in collaboration with the French Embassy in Vanuatu, aims to ensure the safeguarding of intangible creative traditions, the transmission of knowledge and the stimulation of interest amongst young generations of artists to keep contemporary practice alive and evolving. The symposium will include the opportunity for participants to identify opportunities for international and regional interaction with Pacific Islands’ museums, artists and creative industries. It will be an opportunity to promote recognition of PIMA’s Code of Ethics for Pacific Islands Museums and Cultural Centres, and to develop the relationship between PIMA and the Pacific Arts Association (PAA). The symposium aims to produce a set of recommendations advocating the way forward for enhancing ethical research and practice in the field of Oceanic Art.

Optional Tour (additional cost)
The two-day symposium will be preceded by an optional one-day field trip to Chief Roi Mata’s Domain on Efate Island, Vanuatu’s first World Heritage-nominated site.

Of additional interest to visitors, the Vanuatu National Sand Drawing Festival will be held on the island of Ambrym from the 13th to the 15th of May, the week after the Symposium.

Please see http://www.culturepacific.org for further details of the Symposium program, discounted accommodation and flight options, the Field Trip, and links to Vanuatu Sand Drawing.

Registration includes
* Attendance at all symposium sessions on Wednesday 7 May and Thursday 8 May, 2008;
* Registration materials (information package, program, symposium proceedings etc.);
* Refreshment breaks and lunch on Wednesday and Thursday;
* Welcome reception on Wednesday 7 May;
* Closing reception on Thursday 8th May.

Registration does not include accommodation or travel costs. PIMA has negotiated discounted accommodation and travel prices for symposium participants. Please check the PIMA website for details and updates.

To Register for the Symposium
Registration forms in Word or PDF format are available online at http://www.culturepacific.org/en/bm/whats_on/
Please return completed registration form (with payment) by email, post or fax to:
PIMA, c/o Vanuatu Cultural Centre,
PO Box 184, Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Fax: +678 26590.
Email: pima@vanuatu.com.vu.

Enquires may be directed to Secretary-General, PIMA.

Curatorship Open at Yale University

From the AAA job list...

Curator of Pacific Arts in New Haven, Connecticut

Yale University offers exciting opportunities for achievement and growth in New Haven, Connecticut. Conveniently located between Boston and New York, New Haven is the creative capital of Connecticut with cultural resources that include two major art museums, a critically-acclaimed repertory theater, state-of-the-art concert hall, and world-renowned schools of Architecture, Art, Drama, and Music. The Yale University Art Gallery seeks a Curator to create a new Department of Pacific Arts. Yale University Art Gallery, founded in 1832, is the nation's oldest college art gallery, with broad-based collections representing American Painting and Sculpture, American Decorative Arts, Early European Art, Coins & Medals, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Modern and Contemporary, Ancient, Asian, and African Art. The Art Gallery is committed to interacting with professors and students in the Yale community as well as with the general public, and teaching from original works of art is an important part of the Gallery’s mission. The collection of Pacific Arts for which this department will be established is a new promised gift from one of the world's most renowned private collectors of this area. It consists of indigenous sculpture, masks, and architectural ornaments primarily from the islands of Southeast Asia as well as textiles from Indonesia. The curator, who will hold an endowed position, will have the opportunity to create a department under the aegis of the department of Asian art and to design and mount a permanent installation in a large designated gallery, as a part of the Art Gallery’s ambitious project of renovation and expansion. Application: For more information and immediate consideration, please apply online at www.Yale.edu/jobs - the STARS req ID for this position is 2818BR. Please be sure to reference source code IAANA when applying for this position. We invite you to discover the excitement, diversity, rewards and excellence of a career at Yale University. One of the country's great workplaces, Yale University offers exciting opportunities for meaningful accomplishment and true growth. Our benefits package is among the best anywhere, with a wide variety of insurance choices, liberal paid time off, fantastic family and educational benefits, a variety of retirement benefits, recreational facilities including the largest gym in the country, and much more. Yale University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Yale values diversity in its faculty, staff, and students and strongly encourages applications from women and members of underrepresented minority groups.

Qualifications: Ph.D. in Art History, Anthropology, or a related humanities discipline and eight years museum curatorial experience or equivalent combination of education/experience, including a record of publications and professional achievements, including exhibit organization. Successful record of major exhibitions, publications, acquisitions, and donor stewardship. Comprehensive and specialized knowledge of art history appropriate to the collection, with strengths in the sculpture and textiles of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

New Exhibitions at musée du quai Branly

The following exhibits open this October at the musée du quai Branly:

Diaspora: Exposition Sensorielle, October 2, 2007 - January 6, 2008.

Bénin: 5 Siècles D'Art Royal, October 2, 2007 - January 6, 2008.

L'aristocrate et Ses Cannibales: Le Voyage du Comte Festetics de Tolna en Océanie, 1893-1896, October 23, 2007 - January 13, 2008.

Mana Tuturu (Discussed)

While speaking of Museum Anthropology Review, I would note that a recent review of the book Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights by David Delgado Shorter (the reviewer) has been attracting considerable attention and has recieved several extended comments, including one by the book's author Barry Barclay. Find out what the discussion is about here.

On Transactions and Creations

Museum Anthropology contributor and booster Michael F. Brown, whose work on cultural property issues is well known to many in the field, has just published a helpful, detailed review of Transactions and Creations: Property Debates and the Stimulus of Melanesia edited by Eric Hirsch and Marilyn Strathern (in PoLAR). While the collection does not focus specifically on museum-related property issues, Michael's review suggests that it will become an important work in the broader literature on the anthropology of heritage policy and intellectual/cultural property debates. You can find the review in AnthroSource here.

New Exhibitions at Musée du quai Branly

Now on show at Musée du quai Branly:

"New Ireland: Arts of the South Pacific"
April 2 - July 8, 2007

The exhibition is devoted to the rich artistic expression of New Ireland, a Pacific island situated to the northeast of Papua New Guinea, largely ignored apart from its malangan artefacts. Composed of 32 different linguistic groups, the island accommodates a wide diversity of ritual practices and artistic expressions connected to funeral ceremonies.

For more details on this exhibition, click here [http://www.quaibranly.fr/index.php?id=817&L=1].
___________________________________

"Garden of Love": installation by Yinka Shonibare
April 2 - July 8, 2007

Created for the Musée du quai Branly by Yinka Shonibare, a London artist of Nigerian origin, "Garden of Love" takes its inspiration from French-style gardens, and invites the public to undertake a journey filled with surprises. In the "garden," amidst foliage, fountains and groves, visitors come upon a strange ballet of love … Yinka Shonibare reflects here upon identity and history, at the meeting of the two cultures to which he belongs.

For more details on this installation, click here [http://www.quaibranly.fr/index.php?id=816&L=1].

{Photos and text from the museum's website and press catalogs.}

Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights

Some exhibition news that just arrived today will be forthcoming here later this week, I promise. We do not want the blog to devolve into a kind of online table of contents for materials appearing in Museum Anthropology (MUA) or on Museum Anthropology Review (MAR). Keeping this concern in mind, we cannot resist announcing the latest contribution published on MAR. Appearing there today is a excellent review of Mana Tuturu: Maori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights by Barry Barclay. The review is by David Delgado Shorter. I encourage everyone with an interest in intellectual property issues, heritage policy, indigenous rights, media, the arts, and the Maori people to check it out and to spread the word. Thanks to David for his valuable contribution. Please find the review here.

Icons and Treasures from Te Papa Tongarewa

Posted today to Museum Anthropology Review is a brief, but valuable review by Moira Smith of two companion works published by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa--Icons Ngā Taonga from the Collections of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Treasures from the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Find the review here. Thanks go to Moira and to all our diligent reviewers.

Pacific Arts Association News

In recent discussions with Virginia-Lee Webb, Research Curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the The Metropolitan Museum of Art, we have learned of changes in the publishing program of the Pacific Arts Association (PAA), whose journal is Pacific Arts. In 2006, the journal was relaunched in a new series, with new NS volume numbering (just like the American Anthropologist long ago). Museum Anthropology has recieved the first two volumes in the NS, both appearing in 2006 (part of a catch-up strategy), for review and they are very handsome, with lots of color images, paid advertising, and contributions by a host of scholars well known in the museum anthropology and material culture studies community. If possible, we will offer a full review of the relaunched journal in Museum Anthropology, but these changes seemed worth noting here.

The PAA is still working out plans for the journal in its new format, with Carol Ivory (Washington State University) and Webb serving as interim editors. Ivory, as PAA President, introduces the NS in an editorial appearing in NS 1 and online, on the PAA website, here. Good luck to everyone involved in this new effort.

By Airplane to Pygmyland

It has already been blogged on by the folks at Savage Minds, but I wanted to note the appearance of By Aeroplane to Pygmyland: Revisiting the 1926 Dutch and American Expedition to New Guinea. The site is described in the current issue of Inside Smithsonian Research (p. 12) which is a good old fashioned paper publication on research in the museums of the Smithsonian. The project inaugurates a series called Smithsonian Libraries Digital Editions: Sources and Critical Interpretations. The site features interpretive essays by Paul Taylor contextualizing the expedition along with documents from the expedition, including diaries, 700+ photographs and two hours of film footage.

Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf

Figure (bioma)
Papuan Gulf, Purari area, Maipua Village
Wood, pigment
Overall: 25 x 7 1/4 x 1 1/2 in. (63.5 x 18.4 x 3.8 cm)
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Gift of John Vandercook
SL.10.2006.1.4

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has provided information on its current exhibition of art from the Papuan Gulf area of New Guinea, running through September 2, 2007. A release excerpt, modified for tense, offers the following:

An exhibition of some 60 powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and 30 rare historical photographs from the Papuan Gulf area of the island of New Guinea went on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning October 24. Featuring sacred objects as well as photographs, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance: Art of the Papuan Gulf demonstrates how deeply embedded art was in the region's social life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibition is the first in-depth investigation of these art traditions in 45 years. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works will be exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. “This is the first comprehensive study of the material since the groundbreaking 1961 exhibition Art Styles of the Papuan Gulf at the Museum of Primitive Art,” said Virginia-Lee Webb, Research Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. “That exhibition was organized by the late Douglas Newton, who later became a curator at the Metropolitan Museum, when the Museum of Primitive Art's collection transferred here. The current exhibition, Coaxing the Spirits to Dance, and its catalogue make important contributions to our knowledge of one of the major art traditions of the island of New Guinea, the world's second largest island.”

Representing spirits in the form of masks, figures, and ancestor or spirit boards, the sculptures were used to cajole and coax supernatural beings to attend to human needs. The juxtaposition of rare photographic images with the objects – objects often specifically identifiable in the photographs – allows for a ready presentation of culturally specific ideas. The selection of historical photographs, taken by 19th- and 20th-century travelers to the Papuan Gulf, is primarily drawn from the Museum's Photograph Study Collection in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

Among the objects on view, highlights include: a mask called hokore with a bold design depicting a gecko, a clan totem; a carved and painted spirit board called titi ebiha, with an image of a spirit in human form with asymmetrical legs animated in dance; and a masterfully carved wooden figure called agibe that celebrated Kerewa ancestors and the communal longhouse identity ensuring success in conflict. Highlights among the photographs are the Iriwake Figure in Longhouse (daima), recording the exceedingly rare sculpture called Iriwake – together for the first time in the exhibition – taken by Paul Baron de Rautenfeld (Swiss, 1865-1957) in Maiaki village on May 19, 1925; Young Men with Maiva Shields, 1881-1889, one of the earliest photographs documenting art from the Papuan Gulf, made by William Lawes (English, 1839-1907) between 1881 and 1889; and Masks, hevehe Dancing on Beach with Girls, February 1932, by Francis Edgar Williams (Australian, 1893-1943), capturing women dancing “with their arms held high like a flock of mountain birds” alongside towering hevehe masks, which represent sea spirits that have been placated and coaxed to dance.

The exhibition in New York is organized by Virginia-Lee Webb. It will be accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Robert L. Welsch, Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, Sebastian Haraha, Senior Technical Officer, Department of Anthropology, National Museum and Art Gallery, Papua New Guinea, and Virginia-Lee Webb.

A related Sunday at the Met Conference, with participation by international scholars, is planned for spring 2007, and a variety of educational programs will be offered concurrent with the exhibition, including gallery talks, family programs, and a screening of the documentary film The Mythic Camera of Frank Hurley.

Podcasts and other resources related to the exhibition are available online.

Pasifika Styles: An Exhibition Review Case Study

The exhibition Pasifika Styles opened at the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on May 5, 2006. From the western side of the Atlantic, the website, press materials, and informal buzz all suggested, when it was initially announced, that it was a show that really deserved to be reviewed formally and seriously in Museum Anthropology. We immediately began seeking a reviewer in the United Kingdom willing to write a review of it for the journal.

Exhibition reviews are notoriously difficult to commission. One must find someone prepared for the task who is both willing to devote time, attention, and travel to the task (for free) and in possession of enough social distance from the organizers to offer a reasonably unbiased review. This is particularly difficult when social networks of specialists are dense (as they seem to be in the UK) or when the topic falls into an area where a small number of specialists find themselves constantly reviewing each other's work.

Unfortunately, the case of Pasifika Styles illustrates the way the process sometimes ends unsuccessfully. After weeks of email exchanges (and some unreturned emails) we found a reviewer willing and well prepared to take on the review. Like most journals, Museum Anthropology regularly sends reminders to reviewers (of books, digital exhibitions, and gallery exhibitions) whose reviews are past due. These reminders are a normal part of life for scholarly journals and most scholars, at one point or another, find themselves over-committed and behind on such review obligations. Often the reminder leads to completion of the review but sometimes a reviewer must withdraw because new obligations prevent completion of the assignment. When this happens, an editor must decide whether to take up the search for a new reviewer or not. This is what has happened with the planned Pasifika Styles review. After a gap of many months, the reviewer who had planned to do it needed to withdraw. This scholar, in a much appreciated bit of assistance, recommended an alternative reviewer (who thankfully we had not yet asked). The proposed alternative reviewer, unfortunately, was unable to do it. This colleague, again generously, suggested a new candidate (another one whom we had not already asked). Checking into this possibility, we learned that this latest prospect had already reviewed the exhibition for a different journal. I relate this tale as an illustration of what sometimes happens. We have all known great projects--both books and exhibitions--that have, for what seem like inexplicable reasons, gone unreviewed in the literature. Sometimes an editor, having unsuccessfully asked everyone whom she or he can find, just has to give up. I hate to give up seeking a commissioned review of Pasifika Styles, but the quest has reached the point where it does not make sense to keep pestering colleagues about it, one at a time. It is partially a matter of how much time is available to any particular task and partially a problem of throughput. Each day the editorial office receives news of new exhibitions and copies of new books for review, including new works on the art of Oceania for which we will wind up troubling the same community of scholars in hopes of reviews. This is a discouraging reality of the work. We cannot review everything and sometimes projects that clearly deserve our collective attention go unattended to.

Perhaps web 2.0 can accomplish something of what the traditional system of reviewer recruitment, in this case, could not. If you have observations on the Pasifika Styles exhibition that you can share, please feel encouraged to leave a comment here.

Pasifika Styles runs through February 2008 and has an extensive website.