ART on view Masterpieces: New Guinea Art from Tervuren 86 By Kevin Conru FIG. 1: Hunting charm. Alamblak people, Karawari River, Middle Sepik area, Papua New Guinea. Wood, cassowary feathers pigments Acquired by exchange before 1970. 189.2 cm. EO.1970.89.4. Sculptures called yipwons were invoked as charms or “beings” for the culturally necessary headhunting raids. Every man owned several, either inherited from his ancestors or made by himself. While varying greatly in size, they follow the uniform sculptural canon of a large head dominating a skeletal form of inward-curving hooks. FIG. 2: Poster for Masterpieces: New Guinea Art from the Royal Museum of Central Africa. The Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale in Tervuren, Belgium, is universally recognized as one of the world’s largest and most important museums devoted to the art and artifacts of Africa. Much less well known are its impressive holdings of North American and Oceanic objects, which include an important collection of traditional works from New Guinea. As part of that institution’s generous “Pop-Up Museum” loan program during the three-year course of its current renovations, it is touring a large number of its objects in temporary exhibitions being held Europe and the United States. Among these is a show created in partnership with the BRUNEAF organization to bring a selection of the finest of the museum’s all-but-unknown New Guinea works together for a special two-week exhibition at the beginning of June in the Sablon district of Brussels. Melanesian Art at Tervuren The history of the wider Pacific collection at the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale (MRAC) goes back to the founding in 1835 of the Musee d’Armes Anciennes, d’Armures, d’Objet d’Art, et de Numismatique, which was one of the first museums in the world to integrate ethnographic material into a national collection. This museum was originally housed at the royal arsenal that once adjoined the Palais Coudenberg in central Brussels but in 1847 was transferred to the Hallepoort in the southern part the city, where it was renamed the Musee Royal d’Armures, d’Antiquìtes et d’Ethnologie. As the collection grew and eventually outgrew this space, it was moved again around the turn of the last century to what is now known as the Musées Roy-
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