Number 21, April 2007
THE PACIFIC ARTS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER
Number 21, April 2007
Remarks from PAA President Michael Gunn
First of all, I want to thank the outgoing executive committee of the Pacific Arts Association, especially Carol Ivory who was President for four years and before that Vice-President for four years; Roger Neich who was Vice-President Pacific for two years; and Hilary Scothorn who was Treasurer for eight years. Without their strength we would be impoverished.
The Secret of quai Branly
Those of us who work with the arts of Oceania have become increasingly concerned about the number of Museums with large collections of Oceanic art in storage and nothing on display in the public galleries. These include major institutions such as the Australian Museum in Sydney. Other Museums may have tens or even hundreds of thousands of Pacific objects in storage, with perhaps ten or twenty pieces poorly displayed in an obscure part of the public galleries. The Pacific collections themselves, hidden away in storage, are on the whole well maintained. But in recent years a number of Museums in Europe and Australia have ceased funding Oceanic positions, and overall there has been a decrease in the number of people responsible for bringing Oceanic art before the eye of the public. This is a cause for worry. There is more to it.
I am beginning to feel that the strong link between Oceanic collections and anthropology is a double-edged sword. A number of curators of Oceanic or Pacific collections in Museums obtained their positions due in part to a professional interest in the Pacific, such as archaeology or ethnology. Unfortunately, their interest in the objects from Oceania, collected in the 19th century and earlier, is often cursory, if not minimal, and their interest in gaining public support for these objects is often non-existent. This lack of interest becomes institutionalized and ennui becomes a characteristic of such institutions. When we visit those few Museums that display a few Pacific objects, we find the galleries empty of visitors, except perhaps for a guard dozing in the corner. The exception, of course, is the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. As soon as the doors first opened to the outside world in June 2006, people were lining up outside, standing in the rain for several hours, waiting to get in. A year and a half later and the interest of the public has not lessened. More people have seen Oceanic art in the Musée du quai Branly during the past eighteen months than probably all the other collections of Pacific art, artifacts or objects in the world put together over the past ten years.
What is quai Branly’s secret? Is it more than just a combination of an innovative architect creating a controversial building at an amazing location one block from the greatest landmark in what is arguably the most cultured city in the world? Is it a result of the charismatic and hard-working staff, many of whom previously worked at that great contemporary art Museum – the Centre Pompidou? It’s not just because they have a great collection of art objects from the Pacific region. Or is it the aesthetic approach taken at quai Branly, in which anthropology is clearly in evidence but placed discretely in the background?
Whatever the secret of quai Branly is, the rest of us need to learn from it. We need the public to understand and to love what we understand and love, for it is the public who enable us to keep these collections and work with them.
Michael Gunn
About the Pacific Arts Association IXth International Symposium
Paris, July 5-7, 2007
Nearly 200 world-wide attendees from 21 countries and the Pacific Islands, including Papua Niugini and first-time participants from Tahiti and Taiwan, came to the Musée du quai Branly for the 9th International Symposium this July. The participation of members from the Pacific Islands was enabled by generous funding from the Fonds du Pacifique Sud, the Musee du quai Branly and the following donors to whom warm thanks are due: Kevin Conru ▫ CPTM/Aranui ▫Marcia and John Friede ▫ Christraud Geary ▫ Dieter Heintze ▫ Carol Ivory ▫ Suzan Kennedy Zeller▫ Christian Kaufmann ▫ Noel McGuigan ▫ Vincent and Ruth Megaw ▫ Marion Melk-Koch▫ Anthony J.P. Meyer ▫ New Zealand Embassy ▫ Tim Teuten▫ Tribal Art/ Art Tribal Revue ▫Margaret Tuckson▫ Hermione Waterfield ▫ Stéphanie Xatart ▫ Anonymous donors Oceanic Hall of the Musée du quai Branly
PAA Symposium Host: Musée du quai Branly, Paris
Considered one of the most important collections of its kind in the world, the Museum, opened just a year previously in June, houses 300,000 objects from Africa, Asia, Americas and Oceania. More than a splendidly located and designed, mere cutting-edge exhibition space, quai Branly also serves as a center for inter-disciplinary and international cooperative research, education, and scientific study. It is entirely fitting that the Musée du quai Branly, which brings the subject of tribal arts into the mainstream of the world's arts, be the inspiring new home of the PAA-Europe. As such, the Museum will sponsor an International PAA conference on its premises every decade, while holding the European PAA symposia every five years. During the recent Symposium, participants viewed the Museum's permanent collection of Oceania, presented by geographical origin, while highlighting concurrently a range of themes common to the Pacific regions displayed: Melanesia, Polynesia, Micronesia and Island South-East Asia. The exhibitions draw from historic collections created by travelers and ethnographic missions, and by the quai Branly's active acquisitions policy. Also on view were several temporary exhibitions, including the important New Ireland, Arts of the South Pacific show curated by Michael Gunn, Saint Louis Art Museum; Philippe Peltier, Musée du quai Branly; and Markus Schindlbeck, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin and co-produced by their respective Museums. Taking up the challenge of complexities posed by New Ireland's 22 different cultural regions, its wide diversity of ritual practices and particularly refined artistic expressions in funeral ceremonies, the exhibition presents a panorama of the art works originating in this Bismarck Archipelago island. Participants were afforded a tour of the exhibition with curators Peltier and Gunn.
In addition, the Museum's excellent Mediatheque, featuring documentary resources covering disciplines connected to ethnology and anthropology and the study of the tribal arts and civilizations, were toured by visiting PAA members, as well as the Pavillon des Sessions of the Louvre, where examples of major works from the quai Branly collections are displayed. For more Museum details visit www.quaibranly.fr
The IXth PAA Symposium: Keynote Lecture, Papers, Artists' Talk and Performances
Opening the three-days of events and sessions was the Keynote Lecture given by Madame Marie-Claude Tjibaou, President of the Board of Directors of the Agence de Développement de la Culture Kanak (ADCK-the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Nouméa, New Caledonia). Madame Tjibaou spoke of her husband's life's work, which culminated, following Jean-Marie Tjibaou's 1989 assassination, in the opening of the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa in 1998. Here, the rich and unique ancestral culture of the Kanaks links to their present, living culture. At the same time, cooperative international relations and exchanges are developed to nurture and perpetuate contact with their dispersed, ancient kanak objects locally, and as the culture's ambassadors abroad. Madame Tjibaou raised aspects such as collection, display, patrimony, and issues regarding the possibilities-in a world of transitionfor this historical as well as contemporary art; questions of collaboration, preservation and even the effects of global-warming on these issues were brought to the fore. Indeed, how does one successfully prepare to preserve the culture and cultural artefacts of a geographical place in our world which stands to be physically effaced? The entire text in French of Madame Tjibaou's remarks is now available on the Pacific Arts Association website at www.pacificarts.org The English translations will be posted at a later date.
Over the three days of the conference, on the theme of Pacific Art in World View: Exhibition, Research and Relationships, more than 50 papers were presented during its concurrent sessions. Reflecting on past and present philosophies and approaches to the display of historical and contemporary Pacific art, these included examinations of the history of collections and their display; papers on collaborative challenges facing cultural leaders, artists, researchers and curators; on architecture and design's role in display; on the incorporation of research results into public Museum and cultural centre displays; on the role and voice of source communities in the display of Pacific art; on the relationship of anthropological, artistic and art-historical approaches in interpreting and displaying this art; and on the role of the contemporary Pacific and non-native contemporary art in display of today's and historical art of the region. The titles of all papers presented are available now on the PAA website; the Musée du quai Branly will collect these for later publication.
Finally, two solo performances also highlighted the first day of sessions. New Zealand resident Shigeyuki Kihara, born in Samoa to a Buddhist Japanese father and Catholic Samoan mother, performed the lyrical and visually compelling Taualuga; the Last Dance. Staged here by the artist in missionary- introduced Victorian dress, as a tribute to Samoan leaders who lost their lives defending the freedom of their people and to the indigenous people of Moana, historically the taualuga is a Samoan dance of celebration led by the off-spring of a high chief. Following her appearance with Shigeyuki, performance, installation/body adornment artist and writer, New Zealand- born Pacific Islander of Samoan descent Rosanna Raymond's solo performance, wearing her personally created shell ornamentations, rounded out the day.
Pre-conference Tour: Rochefort and La Rochelle
Prior to the Symposium in Paris, 29 PAA members from around the globe enjoyed tours with Claude Stéfani and Denis Roland to the Museum of Art and History, the Pierre Loti House, and the Museum of the former Naval Medical School in Rochefort. In La Rochelle, in the company of Michele Dunand and Elise Patole-Edoumba, a visit was made through the botanical gardens to the collection for Oceanic Art at the newly renovated Museum of Natural History. In Rochefort, which houses three Oceanic art collections, is the encyclopedic Museum of Art and History, which holds the exceptional, historical Pierre-Adolphe Lesson collection, including materials gathered and documented on his three voyages. Here is also a presentation of Kanak artefacts - among them two rare masks-for all of which there is little documentation. Current collaboration with the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa has led to these Kanak pieces becoming witnesses to a vital, living culture anchored in its heritage and to the creation of a collection of contemporary Pacific art in Rochefort.
Members were also afforded a viewing of a special exhibition: Chimbu: peintres contemporains papous. The former Naval Medical School, today a part of the French Naval Museum, holds in its original rooms marvelous examples of Hawaiian tapa and other rare objects of Oceanic origins. The now modest collection in the restored, exotic 19th century home of Pierre Loti belies that of the author's lifetime, inspired first by the voyages of his older, explorer, brother Gustave Viaud, and later by that of his own experience in 1872 as the sailor Julien Viaud, who visited Easter Island, Nuku Hiva and Tahiti. These holdings, including artefacts from Easter Island, the Marquesas, and New Caledonia, were dispersed following his demise by his son at a Drouot auction in 1929. A few items remain to be viewed today.
The significant holdings of the La Rochelle collection, some 1650 objects, come from New Caledonia and, in the main, former British and German Melanesian colonies. Members were afforded access to the Museum's storage where rare objects of the Oceanic collection were shown them.
New Officers of the Pacific Arts Association
During the Paris symposium, new officers were elected to serve until the next general elections in 2010. Contact information for each of them is available on the PAA website.
President: Michael Gunn, Saint Louis Art Museum
Past-President: Carol Ivory, Washington State University
Vice-President, Chair, Europe: Philippe Peltier, Musée du quai Branly
Vice-President, Chair, Pacific: Michael Mel, Goroka University
Vice-President, Chair, N.America: Christina Hellmich, DeYoung Museum
Treasurer: Molly Hennen Huber, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Secretary & Newsletter Editor: Dorit Shafir, The Israel Museum
Pacific Arts Editors: Anne Allen, Carol Ivory, Virginia-Lee Webb
The Manu Daula/Frigate Bird Award
Philippe Peltier, Roger Neich, Carol Ivory, Steven Hooper
The individual honoured this year with the medallion Manu Daula/Frigate Bird Award for outstanding achievement in, and dedication to, the arts of the Pacific is Dr Steven Hooper, Director, Sainsbury Research Unit, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia. At the recent Paris symposium, Dr Hooper presented Showing Respect? Exhibiting Polynesian Encounters in Europe, an examination of the curatorial premises for the exhibition Pacific Encounters: art and divinity in Polynesia 1760-1860, shown at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts just last year.
Future Symposia
The following conferences are currently in the planning stages:
PAA (an affiliated society of the CAA) Annual Meeting and Session at the College Art Association Annual Conference
Dallas, Texas February 20-23, 2008
www.collegeart.org
PAA Europe
2008 Annual Meeting
Brussels, Belgium
October 2008
PAA Europe
2009 Annual Meeting
Museo delle culture [Brignoni collection]
Lugano, Switzerland
2009
Pacific Arts Association's Xth International Symposium
Rarotonga, Cook Islands
July or August 2010
For other conferences and/or exhibitions that may be of interest, visit the International Symposia page of the PAA website. Call for Papers
Papers for the PAA IXth International Symposium held in Paris this year are being collected for publication by Philippe Peltier at the Musée du quai Branly (philippe.peltier@quaibranly.fr ) during October-December 2007.
Pacific Arts, Journal of the PAA
Pacific Arts is the journal of the Pacific Arts Association. It is now issued twice annually beginning with the new series in 2006. To date, four issues have been published (NS 1, 2, and 3-5, 6) and NS 7 is in preparation. The editors welcome essays by members that are submitted for peer review. Proposals for reviews of books, exhibitions and performances are also welcome. For further information please view the Publications page of the PAA website.
Membership
2008 membership fees are:
Regular membership: $50
Retirees, Students & Visual Artists: $35
Fees may be paid by check (in US dollars payable to Pacific Arts Association) or by credit card (MasterCard or Visa, include number, expiration date, signature) and via PayPal on the Membership page of the PAA website. Members of the PAA receive Pacific Arts and The Pacific Arts Newsletter.
Getty Foundation Grants
Each year the Getty Foundation awards Collaborative Research Grants to scholarly teams of two or more individuals to pursue interpretive research projects that offer new explanations of art and its history. Collaboration between university and Museum-based scholars is encouraged, and project teams must include at least one art historian. Project funding typically relates to the preparation of a scholarly exhibition or publication, with the emphasis on the early stages of research. There are projects of particular interest to members of the Pacific Arts Association, ongoing now and that are in the past. Successful projects have varied widely in subject and approach, and grant funds are generally applied towards salary replacement, travel and research materials and assistance. To submit an application for the November 1 deadline, please contact Nancy Micklewright (nmicklewright@getty.edu). Letters of inquiry giving guidance concerning the proposal’s eligibility and competitiveness are welcome. Please see the Getty website for further information and to review guidelines: www.getty.edu
From the Editor
As the recently appointed, new editor of the Pacific Arts Association Newsletter, I would like to take this opportunity to give heartfelt thanks to Virginia-Lee Webb for her fifteen years of effort, time, and service as the previous editor and for her help to me as I take on the Newsletter. I would also like to thank Frances Barrow of Tel-Aviv, Israel whose translating and editorial skills have been invaluable to me in bringing this edition of the PAA Newsletter to its members. Dorit Shafir (doritsh@imj.org.il )