ART on view 88 FIG. 9: Archer’s shield. Elema, Papuan Gulf, Papua New Guinea. Before 1949. Wood, pigment. H: 90 cm. Bought from Toussaint in 1949 by the MRAH, Brussels. Acquired by the MRAC by exchange in 1979. MRAC inv. #EO.1979.1.1205. Shields with the upper middle portion cut out were used to protect archers. Like the gope spirit boards, the personal clan emblem carved on the front was there to protect the warrior from malignant spirits. A notable feature of Papuan Gulf carvings is the large round eyes, which are often painted red. Bloodshot eyes are the sign of a great warrior or sorcerer. aux d’Art et d’Histoire in the city’s Parc Cinquantenaire (locally referred to simply as the Cinquantenaire). The ethnographic collection at that time included works from all regions of the globe, including North and South America, Africa, Indonesia, and the three regions of the Pacific: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Meanwhile, half an hour outside Brussels in the small town of Tervuren, the Musée Royal de l’Afrique Centrale (also sometimes referred to as the Africa Museum or just Tervuren) was founded in 1898 in the Palais des Colonies, built by King Leopold II to represent the Congo at the Exposition Universelle de Bruxelles a year earlier. A larger structure—its current one—was begun in 1904 and formally opened by King Albert I in 1910 as the Musée du Congo Belge. At Congo’s independence in 1960, the name was changed to its current one and the museum’s collecting mandate was expanded to include not only all of Africa but, in the manner of Paris’ Musee de l’Homme, other non-Western world regions as well. As the MRAC grew to be the premier national museum devoted to Belgium’s colony and trust territories, it was logical that it become the repository for appropriate artifacts from other state institutions, and in the 1960s the Cinquantenaire initiated the transfer of some of its ethnographic material to Tervuren. The MRAC was envisaged to be a museum of anthropology, while the Cinquantenaire remained a museum of art and history. The parameters of this reorganization were not entirely intuitive. The Cinquatenaire’s African ethnography was an obvious place to begin and that collection went to Tervuren in its entirety. However, the American collection, which was primarily Pre-Columbian material, was deemed to be related to the core holdings of the Cinquantenaire by virtue of some of its cultures having written languages, so it was retained. The Polynesian and Micronesian collections were also held back, these on the basis that their societies were hierarchical. In the particular case of its Easter Island collection, the Cinquantenaire was closely identified with the 1934–35 Franco Belgian Metraux-Lavachery Expedition to that island, so it too was kept. The museum’s Melanesian artifacts, on the other hand, were approved for transfer to Tervuren based on the notion that Melanesian societies were more loosely organized, lacked hereditary leadership, and had no traditional writing system. The transfer of the African and Melanesian material began in 1967 but wasn’t completed until 1978. The details of this intricate background are needed in order to understand the histories of the fifty-eight New Guinea artworks chosen for the exhibition. Twenty-four of these are from the Cinquantenaire, most of them transferred in 1967, while the rest were acquired directly by Tervuren, mostly thereafter. The New Guinea Collection As its art clearly reflects, the island of New Guinea is one of the most culturally diverse places on the earth. There are a dozen or so main art-producing areas—depending on specific definitions—spread along the coasts and grouped in various parts of the interior. The New Guinea collection at Tervuren, while numerically small at around five hundred objects, represents the range of New Guinea art styles and regions remarkably well and has a great number of recognizable masterpieces. Foremost amongst the various regions represented is the Sepik/Ramu River
untitled
To see the actual publication please follow the link above