FIG. 1 (right):
Navigation chart.
Marshall Islands.
19th century.
Wood, fi ber, shell.
34.2 × 55.7 cm.
Nationalmuseet, Copenhagen,
inv. I.1738.
FIG. 2 (bottom): Lisa Reihana
(b. 1964), In Pursuit of Venus
Infected, 2015–2017.
Ultra HD video, color, 64 min. Auckland
Art Gallery, Toi o Tamaki, donated by
the Patrons of the Auckland Art Gallery,
2014. Reproduced by permission of the
artist and ARTPROJECTS.
The book is broadly representative of the many
cultures, regions, and nations across the Pacifi c.
The preferred format of Royal Academy catalogs
gave us the chance to write concisely but in detail
about each piece. In that sense, the book itself is as
representative as the selection of works. However,
we felt that the essays should be about larger themes
and the challenges of exhibiting the cross-cultural
art of the region today. Our hope is that those
larger questions—of human and cultural movement
over time, of attachment to place, of the centrality
of performance in art, and of the unavoidably
PILAT BOOK PRIZE
Three Questions for
Nicholas Thomas
PILAT 2018
ENGLISH CATEGORY
Edited by Peter Brunt and
Nicholas Thomas
Published by the Royal
Academy of Arts,
London, 30 x 24.5 cm,
352 pages,
ISBN-10:
9781910350492.
£48/$70.
Tribal Art magazine: What are the main
challenges in doing a book that has the dual aim
of surveying art from an extensive and diverse
territory and bringing together up-to-date
scholarship?
Nicholas Thomas: As curators, Peter Brunt, Adrian
Locke, and I had the extraordinary privilege of
visiting the Oceania displays and storerooms of
many great museums across more than twenty
countries in Europe and elsewhere. It was sad
to see so many magnifi cent works in reserve
collections, and it was extraordinarily diffi cult
ultimately to reject pieces that we had initially
longlisted and then shortlisted for inclusion.
OCEANIA