Polynesian Visual Arts;

Meanings and histories in Pacific and European cultural contexts, 1760-1860

 

                   

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About the Project

 

The three-year project (2003-06) focused on Polynesian materials dating from the 1760s (the decade during which expeditions by Wallis, Bougainville and Cook visited Polynesia) to the mid nineteenth century. By that time many parts of the region had experienced Christian evangelism, and various kinds of Euro-American administration had been, or were soon to be, established. The focus was therefore on this contact period of interaction, from which objects, pictorial representations and written accounts survive.

 

Voyagers, missionaries, settlers and administrators collected and preserved Polynesian objects for a variety of reasons − scientific, evangelical, commercial, personal. Significant collections of these finely made and visually stunning objects are held in UK and other museums. One of the main aims of the project was to undertake a comprehensive survey of these collections so they could be studied alongside the pictorial and written accounts, and also in relation to current scholarship. Perspectives drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, art history, history, archaeology and museum studies were used to generate new interpretations and understandings.

 

Two main, yet linked, aspects were investigated: (a) indigenous contexts of use and indigenous meanings in the contact situation, and (b) the contexts of the acquisition of these objects and their subsequent histories in European and/or Polynesian locations.

 

The principal activities of the project included:

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