109 A major regional focus of the Yale University Art Gallery’s Indo-Pacific collection is the art of eastern Indonesia, including Sulawesi, Flores, Timor, and the southern Moluccas. This part of the department’s collection has several large objects that are too big to be shown in the permanent gallery, which has a relatively low ceiling height. The offer of the Art Gallery’s biggest temporary exhibition space presented the chance to show these pieces for the first time in a temporary themed exhibition. This opportunity to focus on eastern Indonesia also allowed for an exploration of the region’s connection to the art of western New Guinea. Tom Jaffe, the major patron of the Art Gallery’s Indo-Pacific department, offered additional loans from the Pacific portion of his collection, and the exhibition East of the Wallace Line was born. On view until February 1, 2015, East of the Wallace Line: Monumental Art from Indonesia and New Guinea takes its title from a zoological line that runs north-south through maritime Southeast Asia. It was first identified by the great British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who together with Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution. On a trip to Bali and Lombok in 1859, during his long stay in the East Indies (1854–1862), Wallace discovered that there are significant faunal differences between Bali and the lands to the west on one side and Lombok and the islands to the east of the Lombok Strait. The two islands “form the extreme points of the two great zoological divisions of the eastern hemisphere.”1 East of the Wallace Line: Monumental Art from Indonesia and New Guinea at Yale FIG. 16 (top): Woman’s jacket, halili. Palu Toraja, Sulawesi. C. 1900. Cotton, mica, sequins; appliqué, embroidery. Cotton; warp ikat. Robert J. Holmgren and Anita E. Spertus Collection. Promised gift of Thomas Jaffe, Yale University Art Gallery, inv. ILE2006.4.65. FIG. 17 (above): Threshold to an ancestral house. Bajawa, Ngada, Flores. 18th–early 19th century. Wood. Promised gift of Thomas Jaffe, Yale University Art Gallery, inv. ILE2014.8.72. Photo: Johan Vipper. The Wallace Line continues northward between Borneo and Sulawesi and then turns northeast, passing below the Philippines and north of the Sangihe and Talaud archipelagos. It would be false to claim that the Wallace Line also follows a cultural divide between East and West in maritime Southeast Asia. However, there are certain iconographic and stylistic characteristics shared in the arts east of the Wallace Line, and these are explored in the exhibition. The focus of the display from eastern Indonesia is on Timor, Flores, Sumba, and the Moluccas, with spectacular ritual structures and ancestral sculptures. Apart from showing some of the more monumental carvings in the collection, this also provided the opportunity to show the collection’s large ceremonial textiles from this region. From western coastal New Guinea, the installation features objects from the Raja Ampat Islands and Cenderawasih Bay, located in the Bird’s Head Peninsula (figs. 18–21). In this region, the so-called korwar style developed. A korwar is a representation of an ancestor spirit that is highly venerated but is also treated with awe and caution. The original korwar is a religious object, but the stylistic characteristics of facial representation with deep eyes and an arrow-shaped nose are also found on By Ruth Barnes
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