Number 22, February 2008
THE PACIFIC ARTS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER
Number 22, February 2008
Remarks from PAA President Michael Gunn
The members of the Pacific Arts Association are artists, academics, curators, collectors, and other people interested in the Pacific region. Over the 32 years of PAA's existence, a distinct PAA sub-culture has developed - a tradition of openness, of communicating and sharing our experiences and understanding of the arts of the Pacific region. We use several formats for this open exchange. During the PAA's international symposia and annual conferences we give papers, talks, and performances. We also publish papers in Pacific Arts and notes in the Newsletter. Now at the end of 2007, the seventh volume of the Journal is complete, but we have only a few articles and reviews waiting to be published. So I want you to think about your unpublished research, unwritten exhibition reviews, and book reviews. Think about what unpublished material you have, or ideas for articles you would like to write. We need your work and we want to publish it. I want you to start writing. Pacific Arts has always been a journal for publishing fieldwork-based papers dealing with the creation, production, and performance of art in traditional yet contemporary contexts, art historical papers, as well as papers that describe or inventory collections. Also included are reviews of exhibition, publications, videos, films and reports of arts festivals throughout the Pacific. We will also be happy to receive your notes on what is happening in the world of Pacific arts - these we can publish in our Newsletter or place on our website. These notes could be about current events such as artists and performers, or museum exhibitions and displays. We are also interested in receiving notes from individuals who may not normally publish; private collectors in particular often have surprisingly clear insights into certain pieces, or groups of objects. They may talk about these ideas with other collectors, but have not found the format to let the wider world know of their discoveries. Curators too, people who work with art objects make surprising discoveries. Communicate your fascination with iridescent green betel legs or your research into the various shades of red ochre to us through the Newsletter or the website!
PACIFIC ARTS ASSOCIATION – EUROPE
Advance Notice of the Annual Meeting
October 29-31, 2008 in Belgium
The 2008 annual meeting of the PACIFIC ARTS ASSOCIATION – EUROPE takes place from Wednesday, 29 October, to Friday, 31 October, 2008, in Brussels, Ghent and Antwerp. This will afford participants ample opportunity to view and discuss the temporary exhibition Art of Oceania: Signs of Rituals, Symbols of Power (working title), that will be on view at the Espace Culturel ING, in Brussels. On October 29, 2008, we are invited to the inauguration of the newly designed display of the South Pacific section at the Royal Museum of Art and History (KMKG/ MRAH), and the following day we will visit the collections of Oceanic art of the Ethnographic Collections of the University of Ghent. The 31st, we will view the Oceanic section of the Ethnographic Museum, Antwerp. In addition, plenty of time will be allowed for the presentation of papers.
Papers at the annual PAA-E meeting, 2008 will focus on the representation and cultural significance of the human body in the art of Pacific peoples and will focus on the different ways the human body is represented, how it is used as a metaphor in the making of tools, architectural creations; and how it is transformed or mutates into representations that combine both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic elements to create supernatural beings, etc. They will also deal with how this representation influenced western artists who ‘borrowed’ formal qualities, such as expressive stylization for aesthetic reasons, and thereby transformed modern art.
Another subject will centre on missions and visions in the display of Oceanic art. Ethnographic museums and cultural institutions tell various stories, which are being translated into the representation and exhibition of objects. We invite you to throw light on approaches to the display of works of art from Oceania. Ethnographic museums and exhibitions can stimulate the reproduction and continuation of traditions, and cultural institutions in the Pacific can play a major role by focusing on the dilemmas that occur in the representation and ethics of collting and exhibiting. These dynamic subjects provide an opportunity for extensive discussion.
Your participation through the presentation of a paper exploring these subjects, or topics relating to these themes is most welcome. Please send your abstract (100-150 words) to the organizing committee by 15 April and pleases specify the length of your presentation (20 or 10 minutes plus 10 or 5 minutes respectively for questions).Doctoral candidates are invited to bring along poster presentations to introduce their research.
Tentative Program:
2008 OCTOBER 29 WEDNESDAY
09.00 -10.00 Registration in Brussels at the Royal Museums of Art and History (Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis/ Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire)
10.00 - 11.15 Presentation of papers
11.15 - 11.45 Coffee break
11.45 - 12.45 Presentation of papers
12.45 - 14.00 Lunch break (available at Museum restaurant)
14.00 - 15.00 Welcome, and visit to the newly designed permanent Easter Island display guided by Nicolas Cauwe, Department Curator
15.00-17.00 Independent visit of the collections of the Royal Museums of Art and History
From 17.00 Official opening of the newly designed Oceanic section of the Royal Museums of Art and History
THURSDAY 30 OCTOBER 2008
10.00 - 11.00 Visit to the permanent display of Oceanic art of the Ethnographic Collections of the University of Ghent
11.00 - 12.30 Presentation of paper
12.30 - 14.00 Lunch break, (dine at the Restaurant Het Pand or at nearby small restaurants)
14.00-15.15 Presentation of papers
15.15-15.45 Coffee break
15.45-17.00 Presentation of papers
FRIDAY 31 OCTOBER 2008
10.00 - 11.30 Visit to the permanent display of Oceanic art (and other collections) of Ethnographic Museum Antwerp
11.30 - 12.30 General Meeting of the PAA
12.30 - 14.00 Lunch break (at small restaurants near the Ethnographic Museum)
From 14.00 Options under consideration: Return to Brussels and visit the Museum of Central Africa in Tervuren and its ethnographic section with objects from Oceania; Presentation of papers; An independent visit to the historical centre Antwerp
From 19.00 Evening reception for the exhibition Art of Oceania: Signs of Rituals, Symbols of Power (working title) at the Espace Culturel ING, Brussels
Various possibilities for social evening and weekend programs are being explored.
Please address your questions or suggestions regarding the program to the Organizing Committee:
Pauline van der Zee, paulina.vanderzee@ugent.be
Astrid de Hontheim, asdehont@ulb.ac.be
Frank Herreman, fherreman.consult@skynet.be
Bart Suys, b.suys@kmkg-mrah.be
Contact us any time.
PAA Europe Executive Committee
Chair: Philippe Peltier, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris
Vice-Chair: Steven Hooper, Sainsbury Research Institute, University of East Anglia, Norwich
Secretary: Anita Herle, Cambridge University Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology
Treasurer: Roberta Colombo Dougoud, Musée d'Ethnographie, Geneva
PAA Europe Membership Information
Membership in PAA Europe is €10 annually.
Please send your new memberships or renewals to: Roberta Colombo Musée d'ethnographie de Geneve 65, boulevard Carl-Vogt Case postale 191, CH-1211 Genève 8m, Switzerland or roberta.colombo@eth.ville-ge.ch
Forthcoming Events
PACIFIC ARTS ASSOCIATION@ COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION
Pacific Arts Association - Affiliated Society Session CAA (College Art Association) 96th Annual Conference
Dallas, Texas, February 20-23, 2008
Session: “Art and Identity in Oceania, Revisited” Chair: Stacy L. Kamehiro
In 1984 the Pacific Arts Association (PAA) held the Third International Symposium on the Arts of Oceania at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Many of the papers presented, subsequently published in Art and Identity in Oceania (edited by Allan Hanson and Louise Hanson, 1990), studied the range in which individual and cultural identities are shaped and expressed through art and visual culture in Australia and the Pacific Basin. The PAA Affiliated Session at the 2008 College Art Association Annual Conference continues this discussion, exploring art and identity, particularly in colonial and “post”-colonial contexts, as processes of historical, spatial, cultural, and political location and dislocation. The papers address the following issues: how identities are produced through visual designations of culture, tradition, gender, or place; the impact of colonial settlement, migration, or travel on the ways individual and/or group identities (and their incumbent contradictions, collaborations, and ambiguities) are situated, asserted, or resisted through the visual; and how historical narratives are imaged and/or futures are envisioned at different times and places in Oceania.
Speakers:
Stacy L. Kamehiro, History of Art and Visual Culture Dept., University of California, Santa Cruz on The Kilohana Art League: Americanizing Hawaiian Art and Culture, 1894-1913
Jewel Castro, Art Department, MiraCosta College and Mesa College on Without Boundaries: Contemporary Oceania Artists, A Movement Happening Now
Margo Machida, Art History and Asian American Studies, University of Connecticut on Positioning Cultures: Contemporary Asian American, Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Artists of Hawai'i
PACIFIC ARTS ASSOCIATION IS AN AFFILATED SOCIETY OF COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION. Information about CAA, including the full conference schedule and membership information, is available at their web site: www.collegeart.org
Oceanic Art Symposium, 6-8 May 2008, Vanuatu
In 2008, PIMA and the Vanuatu Cultural Centre will host the Oceanic Art Symposium. This first-time event for PIMA invites regional and international specialists to join Pacific Island Museum Directors in Port Vila to discuss the status, production and tendencies of Oceanic art today. Registration for the Symposium, timed to follow immediately after the 10th anniversary celebrations for the Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Noumea, is now open. Download the announcement and registration form from the new website, at www.culturepacific.org.
Symposium at the Quai Branly
A symposium entitled Exhibiting Polynesia: past, present and future will be held 17-18 June 2008 in Paris at the Musee du Quai Branly (www.quaibranly.fr).
This is a preliminary announcement for the symposium being held to coincide with the opening of the exhibition, Polynesie: arts et divinites 1760-1860, at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris (16 June – 14 September 2008). *
The symposium, is jointly convened by the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the Departement de la recherche et de l'enseignement at the Musee du Quai Branly. Its principal aim is to bring together curators, researchers, academics and artists from the Pacific, Europe and America who have an interest in Polynesian art and material culture in common, and who are concerned with its presentation, re-presentation and representation. The focus will be on museum and exhibition displays, permanent and temporary, which involve Polynesian material from all periods, including the present. Although past and present exhibition-making will be considered in historical and cultural contexts, there will be an emphasis on the future, as a way of generating and enhancing collaboration and mutual understanding. Several senior scholars will contribute to the symposium, including Arapata Hakiwai, Adrienne Kaeppler, Noelle Kahanu and Pat Kirch, together with a number of representatives from Pacific museums and universities. The meeting is intended to be an active dialogue, with contributions from all symposium participants.
If you wish to attend the symposium it will be necessary to register in advance, as places are limited. There will be no conference fee. Further detailed information about the 2-day program will be announced shortly. Meanwhile, please send expressions of interest to:
Lynne Humphreys, l.humphreys@uea.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 1603 59 30 05
Sainsbury Research Unit University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ United Kingdom
* The exhibition is a re-staging of Pacific Encounters: art and divinity in Polynesia 1760-1860, which was shown in 2006 at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, UK (www.scva.org.uk)
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 Announcements page of the PAA website.
New Galleries for Oceanic Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The freshly restored 17,000 square foot Galleries for Oceanic Art in the New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art's Michael C Rockefeller Wing are described by Ken Johnson of The New York Times as "spectacular, beautifully reinstalled rooms." He goes on to state that the exhibition, which reopened following three long years of refurbishing, "is a wonderfully expansive, soul-stirring display." (NYT, November 16, 2007)
Following the extensive renovation, this is a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world’s premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the large halls present a substantially greater portion of the Metropolitan’s Oceanic collection than was previously on view. The inaugural installation features more than 425 works from Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, and Island Southeast Asia and mark the return of the Metropolitan’s most renowned Oceanic masterworks, including the spectacular works of sculpture from the Asmat people of New Guinea that were collected by Michael C. Rockefeller.
Above the center of the Melanesian gallery today is the soaring, boldly colored ceiling from a Kwoma ceremonial house. More than 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, it is composed of more than 270 individual paintings, commissioned from a group of Kwoma master artists in the early 1970s. Space constraints in the previous installation had allowed only a reduced version to be presented. Also on display is a bark cloth effigy, over 15 feet in height, from New Britain, the only example of its type in the United States, and not displayed in more than four decades. Polynesian highlights include the Metropolitan’s renowned Mangareva, figure. (This is the only example in the United States and among only roughly a dozen examples that survived the destruction of virtually all Mangarevan sculpture in the 1830s at the behest of Christian missionaries). In addition, on view are the Museum’s renowned female figure, from Belau, and weather charm figures from the Caroline Islands. An entirely new feature is the Met's first-ever gallery devoted to the indigenous arts of Island Southeast Asia, from Indonesia, the Philippines, and adjoining regions. Its highlights include a monumental Nias nobleman's stone seat and an extensive array of works from the Batak people of Sumatra. The opening of the New Galleries for Oceanic Art is accompanied by a publication authored by Eric Kjellgren, featuring more than 200 highlights from the Museum’s Oceanic collection. Entitled Oceania: Art of the Pacific Islands in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is published by the Metropolitan Museum and distributed by Yale University Press.
Works by Shigeyuki Kihara chosen by Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Two photographic works by Auckland visual artist, designer, and curator and performance artist Shigeyuki Kihara have been purchased by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for their world-renowned permanent collection.
In her provocative and evocative works, Kihara uses photography and a team of technical assistants to transform herself into different personas drawn from her Samoan cultural traditions, colonial fantasies of South Seas Belles and her own imagination. Dr. Virginia-Lee Webb, research curator from the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Metropolitan was impressed by a Kihara performance at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris last July. Webb explains that “The creativity that Kihara brings to her work is exemplified by an astute synthesis of performance, multiple media, historical images, art history and contemporary art practice." The Museum purchase of the two works, Image from triptych: Fa’a fafine: In a manner of a woman, 2005 and My Samoan Girl, 2005 are arguably the first works by a New Zealand Pacific artist to be added to the Met's permanent collection.
For more information on Shigeyuki Kihara, please visit: www.tautai.org
Pacific Arts: Journal of the PAA
Pacific Arts is the journal of the Pacific Arts Association. Volume NS7 has just been published.
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: $35
Fees may be paid by check (in US dollars payable to Pacific Arts Association) or by credit card (MasterCard or Visa, include number, expiration date, signature) and via Paypal in the Membership section on the PAA website. Members of the PAA receive Pacific Arts and The Pacific Arts Newsletter.
Now you can also make a donation to help bring Pacific Islanders to future meetings. To pay by check in US$ mail to: Molly Huber, PAA Treasurer AONA Minneapolis Institute of Arts 2400 3rd Ave. South Minneapolis, MN 55404 USA
Yale University Art Gallery seeks Curator of Pacific Arts
The Yale University Art Gallery seeks a Curator to create a new Department of Indo-Pacific Art. The Art Gallery is committed to interacting with professors and students in the Yale community as well as with the general public, and teaching from original works of art is an important part of the Gallery’s mission.
The collection of Indo-Pacific Art for which this department will be established is a new promised gift from one of the world's most renowned private collectors of this area. It consists of indigenous sculpture, masks, and architectural ornaments primarily from the islands of Southeast Asia as well as textiles from Indonesia. The curator will have the opportunity to create a department under the aegis of the department of Asian art and to design and mount a permanent installation in a large designated gallery, as a part of the Art Gallery’s ambitious project of renovation and expansion.
Qualifications: Ph.D. in Art History, Anthropology, or a related humanities discipline and eight years museum curatorial experience or equivalent combination of education/experience. Application: Please apply online at www.Yale.edu/jobs - the STARS req ID for this position is 2818BR. Reference source code IPAAX. Yale University is an AA/EOE.
We would like to thank Frances Barrow for her text editing and her assistance in the production of this newsletter, and the Israel Museum's computer services department for their technical advice.
Newsletter Editor
Dorit Shafir
doritsh@imj.org.il