A longstanding exhibition that features Māori and Pacific art, Art of Oceania, will reopen this week at the prestigious Metropolitan Museum in New York following a four-year renovation.
The new galleries feature over 650 stellar works from the Museum’s collection of Oceanic art, drawn from over 140 distinct cultures in a region that covers almost one-third of the earth’s surface.
A delegation of ringa toi Māori has travelled to New York to take part in the historic reopening. Weaver Ataraiti Waretini says their presence enhances the mauri of the taonga and serves as a reminder that their descendants remain connected and present.
“Mātou katoa, he ringa toi ahau, he kaiwhatu a Whāea Tangi Moe, he kairaranga a Lewis. Ahakoa ko tērā tētahi wāhanga o mātou, ko tērā atu ko ā mātou tautoko i a tātou tikanga Māori ki te whakatuwhera i tēnei kaupapa, ki te tuku i ngā karakia me ngā waiata, kia ora rawa te wairua o tēnei whare, ā, kia rongo ai ngā taonga, kei konei wā koutou mokopuna, te tautoko atu i a koutou, te mihi atu ki a koutou i tēnei wāhi o Te Aporonui.”
The gallery features distinctive examples of chiefly ceremonial regalia from the major island groups at the heart of the Pacific, which include Fiji, Tonga, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Australia, Marquesas Islands, Rapa Nui, Hawaii, and Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Toi Māori ki Amerika
E tohu ana te whakatuwheratanga nei i te huarahi roa kua parahia. Kua hipa noa te whā tekau tau nō te whakamānūtanga o Te Māori, ki te whare pupuri taonga o te ‘Met’ te whakakitenga toi tuatahi i horapa ai ngā toi Māori ki te ao.
I arahina te whakaaturanga e te tohunga tikanga tangata, kaitoi hoki, e Tā Hirini Moko Mead, me ētahi atu.
Ko Puamiria Parata-Goodall, mema o Te Kaunihera Toi, arā, o Toi Aotearoa, tētahi o te hunga kua haere atu ki te whakatuwheratanga o te whakaaturanga o Arts Oceania.
Kei te hīkaka ia ki te whai wāhi atu i tēnei kaupapa, nā te mea, ko ia tētahi o ngā rangatahi o Te Māori i tū ki Chicago i te tau 1986.
“The Met was one of the first international museums to work with Māori to recognise the mana of our artforms. Our art forms speak to our identity,” she said
The new Arts of Oceania galleries are organised around a new diagonal trajectory through The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, designed to foreground ancestral connections and Indigenous temporalities, offering perspectives on art that reach deep into Oceania’s past while
The Met says that the galleries are linked by a suite of smaller, more intimate focus galleries designed for close looking and reflection, where visual resonances reinforce the long-standing relationships between Austronesian-speaking peoples who are deeply connected, not separated, by the ocean.
The exhibition reopens on Saturday.
