With so much information available in the modern digital age it sometimes feels that we know, collectively, almost everything. In this edition Professor Ian McNiven shows us that this is wrong and that something as simple as the geographic origin of an artefact is still a matter of research. In Ian’s thought provoking paper, Beyond Bridge […]
Australian Museum’s Cultural Collections Centre Opens in Western Sydney
By Bill Rathmell, OAS President Half-a-dozen members of the Oceanic Art Society were present on 30th July at the opening of the “Cultural Collections Centre”- the new storage for the bulk of the Pacific Island collections of Sydney’s Australian Museum. Since its inception in 1995, the OAS has tried to lobby for this superb world-renowned […]
Beyond bridge and barrier: Torres Strait and curious artefact distributions between Queensland and New Guinea
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 […]
Wylda Bayrón at Le Musée de la Castre, Cannes
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 […]
Massim Canoes – drawings of the unique outrigger canoes from the Solomon Seas
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 […]
Sepik Ramu Art
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 […]