Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn/Winter 2008

(Excerpts from the article by Frank Herreman) During the fall and winter of 2008 and early 2009, Brussels will be a magnet for those passionate about Oceanic art. Among several Oceanic-related events and exhibitions in the month of October, the ING Cultural Centre will feature a major show on the arts of Oceania. Located at the Place Royale near the Royal Museums of Fine Arts and the Sablon, the exhibition is conceived of as a "grand tour" through the islands of Oceania. Oceania: Ritual Signs, Authority Symbols brings together nearly 200 sculptures, masks, adornments, and ritual objects that are divided into four major sections: New Guinea, the Melanesian Islands, Polynesia, and Micronesia. The objects have been carefully selected from Belgian private collections as well as from museums in Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern France, and Germany.

Belgium has never had a major presence in Oceania and, as such, its museum collections in this field are less important than those of its European neighbors. A notable exception is Henri Lavachery, who did research on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 1934 and collected a number of important objects, including a monumental stone sculpture. Today, these artworks are part of the Royal Museums fro Art and History in Brussels. Dr. Nicolas Cauwe, Director of the Belgian Mission on Easter Island and Curator of the Oceanic Collection, is continuing archaeological research on Easter Island.

The countries surrounding Belgium have a long history with the islands of the Pacific. Most of the artworks from the Dutch museums in the exhibition were acquired during different exploration and collection expeditions in the western part of New Guinea, a former Dutch mandate. The objects loaned by the French museums in Lille and Boulogne-sur-Mer were donated by private collectors during the nineteenth century.

Belgium has a long and significant history of private collectors of ethnic arts, particularly those of Africa. Some of these individuals combined their love for African art with artworks from other parts of the world, including the South Seas. Curatorial attention has only sporadically been given to this substantial resource, but two-thirds of the artworks in Oceania: Ritual Signs, Authority Symbols are drawn from private collections. Like most of the museum objects in the show, these pieces have either never or rarely been seen before by the public.

The installation opens with a didactic section that provides geographic context and an overview of the history of the different regions of Oceania, their peoples, and how they were first encountered by Western explorers. This is intended to make visitors familiar with this vast area of the world and also explains how artworks from Oceania came to the attention of European collectors starting in the late eighteenth century, when Captain Cook and other explorers returned from their voyages with "artificial curiosities" from the islands of the Pacific. It goes on to illustrate how the art of these cultures fascinated the surrealist avant-garde during the early decades of the twentieth century. In addition, there is also a small selection of artworks that show how peoples from Melanesia and Polynesia immediately utilized materials such as beads, pigments, and metal tools that they obtained through early European contact. These demonstrate the change between objects from the pre-contact period and those created after the arrival of European seafarers and traders.