As a Museums Journal reader, the chances are that you are, as I am, a Pakeha. Exhibiting Maori applies this label to distinguish those of European descent from the Maori, who are indigenous to Aotearoa (New Zealand). It is slightly unsettling to find oneself on the receiving end of a taxonomy in which we, for once, are consigned to the category of the other.
If at this stage you are beginning to think that this book is only interesting to the museum ethnographer, hang in there; it has an important message for all museums concerned with meeting the expectations of diverse audiences and dealing with the baggage of history. It reflects on how we behave when displaying a culture rooted in traditions quite alien to those of the European museum.
The book's author, Conal McCarthy, chronicles with forensic skill the way in which the exhibition of what it is to be Maori has been controlled within the context of two evolving and interdependent power structures in New Zealand over the past 150 years. The political backdrop is infused by the territorial struggle between indigenous Maori and western settlers, a relationship that was occasionally bloody, and one that has been continually renegotiated since the earliest decades of the 19th century.
In the foreground McCarthy deconstructs the hegemony of display. He analyses the curatorial values and practices that have informed the way that Maori people and their culture - both material and intangible - have been exhibited over the past century and a half in New Zealand and overseas.
Exhibiting Maori takes us on a thoughtful and meticulously documented journey that charts the changing role of Maori in the exhibition of their culture from one of dispossession and resistance, through active participation to eventual repossession. En route, material culture goes through a series of transformations. These are exemplified by an iconic object, a Maori meeting house that has been treated at different times as 'trophy, curio, specimen, artefact, exemplar of arts and crafts, national treasure, primitive art masterpiece and finally, taonga (cultural treasure)'. Exhibited reverentially in Wellington's national museum today, its future is uncertain: destined either for further social transformations within the museum or for return to the people who made it.
On three visits over the past 30 years, I have seen for myself the ways in which indigenous culture is presented in galleries and museums in Australia and in New Zealand. As McCarthy points out, institutional values and assumptions transmute the objects and inform our ways of seeing them. The same object, presented as indigenous art within an aesthetic context in the art gallery, becomes evidence of indigenous cultural practices and beliefs in the museum round the corner. There are many parallels in the west.
But in New Zealand, Maori are fine with the presentation of their material culture as 'art' if it raises their kudos. As McCarthy puts it, 'the history of Maori participation in the colonial cultures of display shows a series of indigenous accommodations with western museology, and Pakeha accommodations with an indigenous heritage movement'.
At the heart of Exhibiting Maori lies the ebb and flow of mana taonga - which can be roughly translated as the power and authority vested in sacred possessions. This idea of innate, objectified power is inevitably inflexed by mana tangata - human authority.
While a PhD thesis doesn't always add up to a compelling read, this one does, though its academic style makes necessary intellectual demands of its reader. I have some minor grumbles. Named references are easy to navigate, but the superscript numbers in the text are not: these have to be tracked 30 pages or so to the end of the chapter - footnotes would have been easier. The text is full of Maori terms, some of which are not in the glossary. It might have been useful if the glossary had pointed out that the original meaning of Maori was natural, normal or local: only since the colonial era has Maori been used to distinguish between people who are descended from the indigenous nations of Aotearoa and white European settlers.
McCarthy observes that: 'In the 21st century, indigenous people may well free themselves from western obsessions with primitivism and identity, only to fall foul of their own obsession with ownership.' Good point, but repatriation - whether literal or symbolic - always involves a complex interplay of competing rights. It is often one means by which indigenous people reclaim control over their lives and win recognition of the place that their ancestors play in a living culture. If there is to be a rethink in the future by Maori people about such claims, that is their prerogative.
You can tell a great deal about the status of indigenous peoples in a nation by their presence in state museums. At Te Papa Tongarewa - meaning a receptacle for treasured possessions - the visitor experience today is one of an almost reverential submersion in Maoridom. McCarthy warns that his narrative should not be construed as tracing progress towards a more truthful revelation. 'Each visual category - from curio to taonga - appeared to be the definitive statement of the exhibitionary apparatus, only to be succeeded by another formulation as the interaction of objects, audience, practices and discourse was shuffled and reshuffled in each particular period. It is clear that Maori exhibitions today are not better or more progressive than their predecessors, and that current categories are merely the latest episode in an ongoing story.' Quite.
Tristram Besterman works freelance in the museum and cultural sectors
Exhibiting Maori: a History of Colonial Cultures of Display
By Conal McCarthy, Berg, £19.99
ISBN: 978 1 84520 475 4
If at this stage you are beginning to think that this book is only interesting to the museum ethnographer, hang in there; it has an important message for all museums concerned with meeting the expectations of diverse audiences and dealing with the baggage of history. It reflects on how we behave when displaying a culture rooted in traditions quite alien to those of the European museum.
The book's author, Conal McCarthy, chronicles with forensic skill the way in which the exhibition of what it is to be Maori has been controlled within the context of two evolving and interdependent power structures in New Zealand over the past 150 years. The political backdrop is infused by the territorial struggle between indigenous Maori and western settlers, a relationship that was occasionally bloody, and one that has been continually renegotiated since the earliest decades of the 19th century.
In the foreground McCarthy deconstructs the hegemony of display. He analyses the curatorial values and practices that have informed the way that Maori people and their culture - both material and intangible - have been exhibited over the past century and a half in New Zealand and overseas.
Exhibiting Maori takes us on a thoughtful and meticulously documented journey that charts the changing role of Maori in the exhibition of their culture from one of dispossession and resistance, through active participation to eventual repossession. En route, material culture goes through a series of transformations. These are exemplified by an iconic object, a Maori meeting house that has been treated at different times as 'trophy, curio, specimen, artefact, exemplar of arts and crafts, national treasure, primitive art masterpiece and finally, taonga (cultural treasure)'. Exhibited reverentially in Wellington's national museum today, its future is uncertain: destined either for further social transformations within the museum or for return to the people who made it.
On three visits over the past 30 years, I have seen for myself the ways in which indigenous culture is presented in galleries and museums in Australia and in New Zealand. As McCarthy points out, institutional values and assumptions transmute the objects and inform our ways of seeing them. The same object, presented as indigenous art within an aesthetic context in the art gallery, becomes evidence of indigenous cultural practices and beliefs in the museum round the corner. There are many parallels in the west.
But in New Zealand, Maori are fine with the presentation of their material culture as 'art' if it raises their kudos. As McCarthy puts it, 'the history of Maori participation in the colonial cultures of display shows a series of indigenous accommodations with western museology, and Pakeha accommodations with an indigenous heritage movement'.
At the heart of Exhibiting Maori lies the ebb and flow of mana taonga - which can be roughly translated as the power and authority vested in sacred possessions. This idea of innate, objectified power is inevitably inflexed by mana tangata - human authority.
While a PhD thesis doesn't always add up to a compelling read, this one does, though its academic style makes necessary intellectual demands of its reader. I have some minor grumbles. Named references are easy to navigate, but the superscript numbers in the text are not: these have to be tracked 30 pages or so to the end of the chapter - footnotes would have been easier. The text is full of Maori terms, some of which are not in the glossary. It might have been useful if the glossary had pointed out that the original meaning of Maori was natural, normal or local: only since the colonial era has Maori been used to distinguish between people who are descended from the indigenous nations of Aotearoa and white European settlers.
McCarthy observes that: 'In the 21st century, indigenous people may well free themselves from western obsessions with primitivism and identity, only to fall foul of their own obsession with ownership.' Good point, but repatriation - whether literal or symbolic - always involves a complex interplay of competing rights. It is often one means by which indigenous people reclaim control over their lives and win recognition of the place that their ancestors play in a living culture. If there is to be a rethink in the future by Maori people about such claims, that is their prerogative.
You can tell a great deal about the status of indigenous peoples in a nation by their presence in state museums. At Te Papa Tongarewa - meaning a receptacle for treasured possessions - the visitor experience today is one of an almost reverential submersion in Maoridom. McCarthy warns that his narrative should not be construed as tracing progress towards a more truthful revelation. 'Each visual category - from curio to taonga - appeared to be the definitive statement of the exhibitionary apparatus, only to be succeeded by another formulation as the interaction of objects, audience, practices and discourse was shuffled and reshuffled in each particular period. It is clear that Maori exhibitions today are not better or more progressive than their predecessors, and that current categories are merely the latest episode in an ongoing story.' Quite.
Tristram Besterman works freelance in the museum and cultural sectors
Exhibiting Maori: a History of Colonial Cultures of Display
By Conal McCarthy, Berg, £19.99
ISBN: 978 1 84520 475 4
