Promoting the understanding and appreciation of Oceanic art.
By Professor Ian J. McNiven, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, Monash University, Melbourne During the nineteenth century Europeans became increasingly aware of the extraordinary diversity of indigenous cultures across New Guinea and Australia. Along with such awareness was a desire by museums, especially in England, Europe, and […]
by Chris Boylan Dominating the hill overlooking Cannes city and the Mediterranean is the ancient medieval castle and tower, now the ethnological museum, of Cannes, Le Musée de la Castre. The museum has a small, but very fine collection of Oceanic art including great Polynesian objects and early New Guinea pieces. An exhibition in the museum […]
Tasman Light Gallery, National Maritime Museum, Sydney – 1 August to 29 September 2019 The Massim culture of Papua New Guinea is home to a unique collection of colourful outrigger canoes used for trade and are vital to the significant inter-island and community exchange of precious artefacts known simply as Kula. Located in the Solomon Sea […]
Edited by Kevin Conru. 296 pages illustrating 170 objects from three private collections. Photographs by Hughes Dubois. Edition limited to 500 copies, €295. Conru Editions, released in May 2019. Review by Emilie Jolly Sepik Ramu Art celebrates the broad diversity of art productions from the plain of the Sepik and Ramu rivers. This volume, edited […]
In this issue of the of the OAS Journal we are fortunate to have Dr Maia Nuku, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, chart the evolution of that institution over the last 50 years, particularly in the decisions taken that resulted in its present day collections of Pacific art. Through the actions […]
By Pierre Laffont The XIII Pacific Art Association (“PAA”) international Symposium took place over four days on 24-28 March in Brisbane. It was organised by the Queensland Museum in partnership with all the major cultural institutions on the South Bank of Brisbane (Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Queensland Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art (“GOMA”), State Library […]
In this talk, Ian McNiven will outline what he calls the “Coral Sea Cultural Interaction Sphere” as a framework to help shed light on why some ethnographic artefact types are shared between northern Queensland and southern New Guinea but other artefact types fail to extend across Torres Strait. Different distributions of artefact types provide new […]
By Maia Nuku The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of Oceanic art includes over two thousand works of art from the Pacific: ancestral treasures handed down across the generations that were created in islands and archipelagoes that extend across a vast expanse of ocean. Highlights of the collection include the landmark architectural installation or ‘Kwoma […]
by Marina Garlick Oceania is the title of the catalogue of the eponymous exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London to mark 250 years since James Cook set out on his first voyage. It also celebrates 250 years since the founding of the Royal Academy. The exhibition was organised by the Royal […]
The 2019 Oceanic Art Society Forum was an intellectual and emotional odyssey. Oceanic art represents and encompasses many things: sublime beauty and irresistible mystery; cultural treasure; markers of colonial dispossession and loss, but also continuity and hope. That indeed is what Oceanic art is: objects that bind people through time; binding those who made them […]
