Pacific Presences - Volume 1

Hundreds of thousands of works of art and artefacts from many parts of the Pacific are dispersed across European museums. They range from seemingly quotidian things such as fish-hooks and baskets to great sculptures of divinities, architectural forms and canoes. These collections constitute a remarkable resource for understanding history and society across Oceania, cross-cultural encounters since the voyages of Captain Cook, and the colonial transformations that have taken place since. They are also collections of profound importance for Islanders today, who have varied responses to their displaced heritage, and renewed interest in ancestral forms and practices.

This two-volume book enlarges understandings of Oceanic art and enables new reflection upon museums and ways of working in and around them. In dialogue with Islanders' perspectives, It exemplifies a growing commitment on the part of scholars and curators to work collaboratively and responsively.

Volume I focuses on the historical formation of ethnographic museums within Europe, the making of those institutions' Pacific collections, and the activation and re-activation of those collections, over time and in the present.

Contents

Biographies

Preface

Introduction

1. Pacific Presences in Britain

Nicholas Thomas

2. Curiosity, Revolution, Science and Art: Pacific collections and French Museums

Lucie Carreau

3. Papua collections in the Netherlands: a story of exploration, research, missionization, and colonization

Fanny Wonu Veys

4. Oceania in Russian history: Expeditions, collections, museums

Elena Govor

5. Oceanic Collections in German Museums: Collections, Contexts, and Exhibits

Rainer Buschmann

Notes

Acknowledgements