Home Art of livingDive into the fascinating arts of Oceania at Quai Branly

Dive into the fascinating arts of Oceania at Quai Branly

by pascal iakovou
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OCEANIA

Exhibition from March 12 to July 7, 2019

Garden Gallery

From New Guinea to Easter Island, from Hawaii to New Zealand, the exhibition OCEANIA presents the entire Pacific island world. Originating in this vast, island-studded territory, the “arts of Oceania” consist of a range of styles, associated with numerous cultural and linguistic groups, and dynamic traditions, shifting with historical change. Bringing together 170 pieces from public and private collections, including several masterpieces unknown to the general public, the exhibition traces the history, from ancient times to the present day, of an art form that is the guardian of traditions and identities repeatedly overturned by trade, colonization and forced evangelization.

From large, carefully sculpted pirogues to fine corporeal ornaments, from figures of divinities to contemporary videos and installations, the exhibition shows how ancestral memory and a critical eye, tradition and modernity, coincide in the arts of Oceania. The Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac is proud to bring together both ancient and contemporary testimonies of these cultures, and to give an account of the art of a continent in all its diversity.

Commissioners : Prof. Nicholas Thomas, Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University (UK), Dr. Peter Brunt, Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand)

Associated auditors: Prof. Dr. Adrian Lockecurator in charge of exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (UK) and Stéphanie Leclerc-Caffarel, Head of Oceania Collections at the musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.

Statue © muse?e du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo Patrick Gries, Bruno Descoings
Poupe de pirogue© muse?e du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, photo Patrick Gries, Bruno Descoings

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)

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