FIG. 13 (right): Shield.
Matembe village, Lower Sepik
River, East Sepik Province, Papua
New Guinea. 19th century.
Collected by Capt. Friedrich Haug in
Matembe village in 1909.
Wood, pigment. H: 160 cm.
UMFA, purchased with funds from Friends of
the Art Museum, inv. 1983.001.006.
barkcloths and assisted with the review of that
collection. The arts of Indonesia are also represented,
including works from Kalimantan and
Sumatra (fig. 18).
Generous loans allow additional art forms to
be presented. From the collection of Dr. Gordon
Sze is a Maori pare once owned by Lt. General
A. H. L. F. Pitt Rivers (fig. 16). From the collection
of Victor Teicher an important Iatmul
house gable figure (fig. 11), a Sepik River-area
hook, and several spirit boards from the Papuan
Gulf supplement the examples from the island
of New Guinea in the UMFA collection. The
new installations for the Pacific and for Africa
were generously funded by the John and Marcia
Price Family.
Covering nearly 3,000 years of creativity,
the objects in the Mesoamerican gallery represent
cultures spanning from the beaches of
west Mexico to the jungles of Guatemala and
the coast of Panama. 2017 marks not only the
reopening of the gallery to visitors, but also the
fortieth anniversary of the museum’s collecting
and displaying art from this region.
UTAH