106 THE MARQUESAS ISLANDS COLLECTION AT THE MUSÉE D’ETHNOGRAPHIE IN NEUCHÂTEL The Story of an Unexpected Museum Collection By Roland Kaehr in collaboration with Olimpia Caligiuri Cullity FIG. 1 (left): Club, ‘u’u (detail). Marquesas Islands. Probably late 19th century. Wood (toa), vegetable fi ber. L: 134 cm. MEN V.198 (Favarger Collection). Photo © A. Germond, Neuchâtel. FIG. 2 (above right): Exterior view of MEN with slit drum, atingating, from Ambrym Island, Vanuatu. 20th century. Wood. H: 293 cm. MEN 72.5.1. Photo © A. Germond, Neuchâtel. FIG. 3 (right): Statue of the deity Pota. Atuana marae, Hivaoa Island, Marquesas Islands. Stone. H: 116 cm. MEN V.1 (Krajewski Collection). Photo © A. Germond, Neuchâtel. While it is better known for other areas, the Musée d’Ethnographie de Neuchâtel (hereafter MEN) possesses a small but particularly fi ne collection of art from the Pacifi c. The institution’s Oceanic and Australian holdings contain more than 2,500 inventoried items, some of the material that is so poorly known—or even unknown— that its 1970 Arts Océanien exhibition (Gabus and Bühler 1970) featured many objects that were borrowed from outside sources, yet it neglected the artworks that lay fallow in its own storerooms. A large Ambrym slit drum was erected on the museum’s grounds in 1972 and since then has signaled the institution’s location in a striking manner (fi g. 2) while also serving as a reminder of the existence of its Oceanic collection. Despite this visual prominence, MEN’s published inventory (Collections ethnographiques 1978: 368–375) reveals little detail about these holdings, yet their story very much deserves to be told. With the exception of certain types of objects—New Guinea after the Second World War, Australia more recently, and a few complements to older subcollections—most of the objects held in the museum’s Oceanic collection were there by 1914.1 The MEN’s founding collection was the donation of a natural history “cabinet” by Charles Daniel de Meuron (1738–1806) on June 6, 1795. Other particularly
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