MUSEUM news ABOVE RIGHT: Comb fi nial. Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Ethnologisches Museum Berlin. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußinscher Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum. Photo: Martin Franken. 56 world. Masks, fi gures, and paintings were exhibited in art galleries and studied by researchers with an interest in understanding their signifi cance. Just as the languages do, the objects from this region refl ect the diversity of local identities. More than anything else, they are a means of understanding the organization of Sepik River villages, the evolution of their traditions, and the exchanges that may have taken place between otherwise localized groups. For example, the discovery of malu boards, created by the Sawos (a middle Sepik River group) in Iatmul and Singrin villages downriver, established the fact that contact existed between these groups. Philippe Peltier of the Musée du Quai Branly and Markus Schindlbeck of the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, the exhibition’s curators, have assembled 220 objects, all from European museums and for the most part collected prior to World War I, with the intention of making the show more than just an art exhibition, but a tribute to the wealth and diversity of these cultures, as well as a key for understanding their lifestyles and their complex social organization. Starting LEFT: Hook. Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Ethnologisches Museum Berlin. © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußinscher Kulturbesitz, Ethnologisches Museum. Photo: Claudia Obrocki. from the premise that an understanding of how Sepik people lived and knowing what their objects meant to them is the only way to be able to truly appreciate them, the viewer is invited to stroll through a village and to discover the different objects that were used there, from the riverbanks to the heart of the village, then into the interior of a family house (the women’s domain), and fi nally into a men’s house, the heart of ceremonial life, where the objects used in men’s rituals and for the initiation of boys were kept. One of the most exciting exhibitions of the season, it will be on view in Berlin through June 14, and then at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich from July 10–October 4. An in-depth article about the show will appear in this magazine when the show is presented in Paris this autumn. BELOW: Plaque, malu. Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Museum der Kulturen, Basel. RIGHT: Mask. Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Museum der Kulturen, Basel.
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