Dance of the Ancestors: Art from the Sepik of Papua New Guinea

In its last days at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich is Dance of the Ancestors: Art from the Sepik of Papua New Guinea, an exhibition focusing on the many tribes of the Sepik River in northern Papua New Guinea. Philippe Peltier of the Musée du Quai Branly and Markus Schindlbeck of the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, the exhibition’s curators, have assembled 220 objects, all from European museums and for the most part collected prior to World War I, with the intention of making the show more than just an art exhibition, but a tribute to the wealth and diversity of these cultures, as well as a key for understanding their lifestyles and their complex social organization.

Visit the Museum Rietberg website.

Chiefs and Governors: Art and Power in Fiji

Chiefs and Governors: Art and Power in Fiji , on show now at the Museum and Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, is the first ever exhibition dedicated to traditional Fijian art outside its home country. It draws on MAA’s exceptional collection of Fijian artifacts, photographs and archives, a collection closely linked to the early colonial history of Fiji and the foundation of the Museum. Baron Anatole von Hügel, MAA’s first curator, travelled within Fiji between 1874 and 1877, and along with Sir Arthur Gordon (First Governor of Fiji) and Alfred Percival Maudslay (Sir Arthur’s private secretary) assembled an impressive Fijian collection, including outstanding objects presented by Fijian and Tongan chiefs. This material formed the founding ethnographic collection of the Museum when it opened in 1884. 

For more information, visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and image courtesy of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Kastom: Art of Vanuatu

Vanuatu is very different from other Pacific nations. Traditional practices known as Kastom remain strong even after a century of dual colonial religious influences. Kastom: Art of Vanuatu presents for the first time the unique collection of arts from this area held by the National Gallery of Australia. In the early 1970s the Gallery contracted an agent to field collect in Vanuatu resulting in the acquisition of nearly two hundred works, a selection of which will be accompanied by other important works from the NGA's Vanuatu collection. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia

Spirit Faces at the Australian Museum

Through March 31, 2013, the Australian Museum of Sydney is presenting a special installation of masks from across Melanesia. Spirit Faces offers visitors the chance to discover the vast variety of South Pacific masks--in form, function, material, and associated mythology.

Visit the Australian Museum's official website.

Eharo mask  -  Papuan Gulf  -  Before 1920

Lorr mask  -  Duke of York Islands  -  Before 1885

Malanggan mask  -  New Ireland  -  Before 1887

Susu mask  -  New Britain  -  Before 1911

Overmodeled shell mask  -  Sepik, Papua New Guinea  -  Second half of 20th century

Images courtesy of the Australian Museum