2 On a trip to London last September, I had the pleasure of visiting the British Museum for meetings with a couple of its staff members. This remarkable institution has been presenting art and information to the public free of charge since its founding in 1753 and given the age and depth of its collection, the shows that it presents are rarely short of extraordinary. While there, the Oceanic curator, Gaye Sculthorpe, told me to be sure to visit an exhibition of Pacifi c barkcloth that was currently up, though she warned me it might be diffi cult to fi nd. This was no exaggeration. The normal route to the galleries in which it was displayed was blocked by construction, and it took a full half hour of asking directions, wandering up and down staircases near the top of the building, getting lost, and eventually discovering a small set of stairs in an Asian gallery before I fi nally found my destination. It was well worth the effort. This was a remarkable installation that spanned the history and use of barkcloth throughout the far-fl ung cultures of the Pacifi c islands. Eschewing the term tapa since it is not a universal designator, it traced the material as a living tradition, illustrating it with examples as old as the eighteenth century and others that are starkly contemporary. Indeed, the recently created wedding gown by Samoan designer Paula Chan Cheuk was every bit as compelling as the early Hawaiian material. But you don’t need me to tell you about the show, since the exhibition’s curator, Natasha McKinney, has written an excellent article about it, which you’ll fi nd later in this issue. What that article can’t convey was the sense of being in the same space with this extraordinary material. This is where the challenge of fi nding it worked greatly to my advantage. Save for a guard, who seemed far more interested in his smartphone than he was in me, the place was empty and dead quiet. The subdued colors and geometric patterns of the textiles glowing in an otherwise black space created a sense of light akin to stained glass. Each piece shone, and together they formed an unparalleled contemplative environment. A downside to the British Museum is that it has no permanent space dedicated to its renowned collection of Pacifi c art, so this exhibition was a rare day in the sun for these textiles, which was particularly effective in that dark gallery. Furthering this metaphor, research can be thought of as bringing information out of the darkness and into the light, where it can be properly examined and interpreted. Former curator of the Musée d’Ethnographie in Neuchâtel, Roland Kaehr, has been engaged in this process in collaboration with Olimpia Caligiuri Cullity, his current counterpart there, in an attempt to sort out generations of careless, even dismissive, recordkeeping and discern the true history of the museum’s Oceanic holdings, and particularly that of its fi ne Marquesas Islands collection. His fi ndings, published here, are nearly as complex as the story they trace, but they reconstruct the background of these works, fi lling in long-absent gaps in their temporal context. An old friend of mine, Javier Peres, who is profi led in these pages, has his own take on light, both literally and fi guratively. A notable contemporary art dealer based in Berlin, his large and immaculate apartment there is bright, airy, and painted white throughout, creating a neutral space in which he displays large canvases by major-name contemporary artists alongside the material that is his true passion, African art. In doing so, he is representing the future of the art market in our fi eld. While the art that we address in these pages has long been the object of passion for specialists, many of the top lots at auction are now no longer going to major collectors of African and Oceanic art, but rather to individuals with wider interests and broad-reaching collections. Some may lament the loss of such objects to those musty, tightly packed, and fascinating collections that we so love to explore, but this circumstance fi nally allows these great artworks to take their rightful place and be admired as singular masterpieces among their peers from cultures around the world and throughout the ages. The major auction houses are well aware of this trend and have been trying to fi nd a way to optimize it. Sotheby’s, which is poised to offer masterpieces from the Malcolm Collection of African art late this spring, has held successful special exhibitions in which African and Oceanic works were placed among top artworks from its various other departments. Similarly, a Luba bowstand was the top seller in Christie’s “Exceptional Sale” in London last July, making nearly twice the price realized by the second-highest lot in the sale, a WWII Spitfi re fi ghter plane that itself went for more that £3 million. This spring, Christie’s plans to preview its New York sale of African and Oceanic art with its sculptures mixed in among the offerings for its major sales of Impressionist, Modern, and Post-War and Contemporary art. When we founded this magazine more than twenty years ago, I was concerned that we might one day run short of material. As it has turned out, nothing could be further from the truth. The story of Ishi is one that is known to every schoolchild in California since it is locally relevant, but its oppositional and frankly bizarre nature makes it universally interesting. I assumed we’d get to it early on in one way or another, but after more than two decades, only the recent sale of one of his beautiful projectile points at Skinner in Boston fi nally brought it up in our Object History section. With this issue, we’ve now profi led seventy-nine collectors, and there certainly is no shortage of others as we move forward. Museums around the world are producing more and better exhibitions that demand in-depth coverage. Our feature articles have barely scratched the surface of individual cultures with great art traditions that are worthy of our readers’ attention, and that is without counting cross-cultural surveys such as Maria Kecskési’s thoughtful study of the pangolin in African art, which also appears between these covers. And the art market will only get more interesting. Given all this, we look forward to casting new light on a myriad of subjects for you in the years to come. Jonathan Fogel Our cover shows a Fang janiform helmet mask from Paul Guillaume’s collection as published in his 1917 Sculptures Nègres, which featured a preface by Guillaume Apollinaire. Published by Frazier-Soye for Paul Guillaume, Paris, in an edition of 63 copies. Editorial
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