By Crispin Howarth, Curator, Pacific Arts, National Gallery of Australia Since the mid-1920s, this masterpiece of Oceanic sculpture with its gently twisting elongated torso, oversized hands and stout powerful legs was displayed in a small museum at the Lutheran Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa. The museum is a celebration of missionary work by Americans in […]
About Crispin Howarth
New Britain art in the Melanesian Gallery
By Crispin Howarth, Curator Pacific Arts, NGA The majority of the National Gallery’s Pacific Arts collection comes from Papua New Guinea; the newly reinstalled Melanesian gallery reflects this with arts from several of PNG’s provinces, especially New Britain and New Ireland. The arts produced in this region are characterised by arresting and radically inventive sculptural […]
Unpacked: The Reverend Fellows collection of Trobriands art
Public lecture by Crispin Howarth: Held at the National Gallery of Australia is a little known, rarely shown but very significant collection of Massim Art. Amassed in the late 19th century and for the best part of the 20th Century hundreds of objects lay hidden under a house, dozens of decorated clubs, piles of elegant […]
Tribal Art London, 2 – 5 September 2015
Up until the early 1990s Great Britain had quite a number of tribal art dealers, auction houses ran specialist sales and London was central to collecting tribal art. International shifts in the art market moved this centre to New York. Now, for many, Paris is seen to be the centre for tribal art however, there […]