"I want you
to come back with me to a September day, 1984. It's five o'clock in the
morning. We're sitting on the top step leading up to the illustrious Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York - A slight puff of wind stirs the enormous vertical
banner towering above the doors Proclaiming, TE MAORI, MAORI ART!
The beginnings
of TE MAORI go back several years. A team of curators in New Zealand under
the guidance of Maori historian, author, carver and academic Professor Hirini
Moko Mead assess what objects would make up the exhibition. Private and
public collections are visited. Gradually 174 prized and remarkable works
of traditional Maori art dating back to 1000 AD are assembled.
Works from
thirty Maori tribes representing fifty types of objects are brought together
- monumental architectural carvings - gateways, ridge poles, house posts
and lintels, elaborate canoe carvings, paddles and bailers, weapons, musical
instruments, tools, mortuary carvings and objects of personal adornment.
Wood, stone, jade, ivory, bone and shell. The final selections are made
by Douglas Newton, (the Metropolitan's chairman of Primitive Art), Professor
Mead and Dr David Simmons, (Ethnologist at the Auckland Museum.)
Even before
TE MAORI leaves Aotearoa for New York, St Louis, San Francisco and Chicago,
it is being called "an exhibition of Maori Art" - not - an "exhibition of
Maori artifacts". TE MAORI is being seen as the precious outcomes of skilled
artisans.
There is a
glimmer of natural light. The Kaumatua group has arrived - each member wearing
prized heirloom cloaks made of kiwi feathers with geometrical patterns made
from coloured feathers of other birds - tui, pigeon, kaka - greenstone and
whalebone ornaments are worn - many carry ornately carved tokotoko - walking,
or talking sticks.
The Karanga,
the women's keening call of lamentations ring out - 5th Avenue will never
be the same- Kaumatua intone incantations welling from solo voices to chorus.
The great double doors of the Metropolitan Museum Of Art swing open ...
the procession begins with grace and dignity, slowly moves up the steps
as we join it.
The successful
Te Maori exhibition opens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York
in 1984, then tours several other United States cities; St Louis, San Francisco
and Chicago. Many, many thousands of Americans respond enthusiastically.
On its
return to New Zealand, Te Maori was shown in the main cities under the title
"Te Maori. Te hokinga mai. The return home" It was again well
received. While the taonga (treasures) were created many generations
ago, they are regarded as tupuna (ancestors) to whom Maori are personally
linked, and so the taonga were appropriately accompanied by traditional ritual
welcomes. Consequently, each exhibition of the taonga became an expression
of te ao Maori (the Maori world) as a vibrant, living culture.
Te Maori was
a landmark event for Maori art and culture. It sparked a new respect for
taonga (treasures) in museums and how they were displayed.
