OCEANIA: from Australia to Easter Island

OCEANIA: from Australia to Easter Island
Part of the permanent exhibition Walks in a World
The Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde zu Leipzig

Some 30,000 objects from the inhabitants of Australia and Oceania are preserved in the Grassi Museum of Ethnology Leipzig which reopens its Oceania wing now. Objects from the early contact period of white settlers with the indigenous Australian population in the 19th Century are supplemented with more recent acquisitions and paintings by contemporary, internationally renowned Aboriginal artists. New Guinea is represented by unique masks and a drum from the inhabitants of the islands of the Torres Strait while the immense diversity of local cultures is studied through objects from the Papuan Gulf and Sepik area. The island cultures of Micronesia are seen through household items, clothing and jewelry and above all boats, while the Islands of Melanesia and New Ireland, in particular, feature objects associated with burial rites. Objects from Fiji also hold a key place in this collection.

Today global warming threatens flat atolls with rising sea levels. This particularly affects the inhabitants of Tuvalu in Polynesia. The museum commissioned and documented the on site construction of a traditional living room and bedroom house from the island Niutao in Tuvalu by a native master builder and his three helpers on its website.

For more information, please visit the museum's website.