MUSEUM Spotlight it possible to examine a wide variety of subjects. One of the highlights in this collection is the Hawaiian ‘ahu’ula feather cape (fig. 11), which was acquired in 1829. Another of the MEG’s most important holdings for this area is undoubtedly a Marquesas Islands canoe ornament (fig. 13)—an ancestral figure that protected mariners—whose presence evokes the art of navigation that was so vital to the peoples of Oceania. Highlights in this section also include other objects associated with rank and social status from the Marquesas Islands, as well as from the Society Islands and Tahiti. These include body ornaments and weapons, most of which come from the Émile Chambon Collection and were acquired by the museum 82 in 1981. An exceptional Marquesas Islands box (kotue), of which only about a dozen examples are known to exist today, was obtained from Louis Pictet in 1874 (fig. 12). Alongside these important works—and the list could be much longer, especially if it were to include New Guinea objects, of which the museum also has many fine examples— there are subgroups of objects that give the MEG’s Oceanic collection a unique character. One of these is the group of New Caledonian engraved bamboos, assembled primarily under the supervision of Marguerite Lobsiger-Dellenbach, who had quite a passion for them. Another is the Australian collection, which consists of a large number and variety of objects. Mostly assembled by Maurice Bastian, Georges Barbey, and Karel Kupka, it includes totemic works from Arnhem Land, such as two magnificent pukumani funerary posts from the small but well-known Tiwi group. These precede the display of two more sections of funerary objects from the Bathurst and Melville Islands (ETHOC 025719) and two rare Wiradjuri or Gamilaroi engraved trees from New South Wales, one of which was collected in 1919. It was acquired through an exchange of two Teke figures with the Australian Museum in Sydney (ETHOC 028210). Next come the Americas, the installation for which runs from north to south, beginning with an examination of the Potlatch, or “art of maintaining one’s name,” a tradition at the heart of the Northwest Coast native cultural practices. The objects that relate to it, which include a Tlingit mask (fig. 14) and an ensemble of ritual receptacles and spoons dating to the mid nineteenth century, were collected and donated by Hippolyte-Jean Gosse in 1889. Inuit art from Alaska and Greenland is also particularly well represented here. It features, among other things, some particularly old and rare pieces given by Georges Barbey and Edouard Wyss-Dunant, such as a magnificent oval ceremonial box decorated with ivory figures of polar bears FIG. 14 (above): Mask. Tlingit, Sitka, Alaska. 19th century. Wood, metal. H: 23 cm. Ex Dr. John B. White, donated to the Smithsonian Institution; given by the Smithsonian to the Musée Archéologique in 1889. MEG Inv. ETHAM K001651. FIG. 15 (below): Ceremonial box. Iñupiat, Deering, Alaska. Early 20th century. Wood, bone, ivory, leather. H: 24 cm. Donated by Georges Barbey in 1956. MEG Inv. ETHAM 025852.
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