Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T05:40:52.656Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cultural Property, Museums, and the Pacific: Reframing the Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2008

Haidy Geismar
Haidy Geismar
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology and Museum Studies, New York University. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The following short articles were presented at a special session of the Pacific Arts Association, held at the College Arts Association annual meeting in New York in February 2007. Entitled “Cultural Properties—Reconnecting Pacific Arts,” the panel brought together curators and anthropologists working in the Pacific, and with Pacific collections elsewhere, with the intention of presenting a series of case studies evoking the discourse around cultural property that has emerged within this institutional, social, and material framework. The panel was conceived in direct response to the ways that cultural property, specifically in relation to museum collections, has been discussed recently in major metropolitan art museums such as the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). This prevailing cultural property discourse tends to use antiquities—that most ancient, valuable, and malleable of material culture, defined categorically by the very distancing of time that in turn becomes a primary justification for their circulation on the market or the covetous evocation of national identity—as a baseline for discussion of broader issues around national patrimony and ownership.

Type
Special Section: Museums and the Pacific
Information
International Journal of Cultural Property , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 109 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. New York: W. Norton, 2006.Google Scholar
Belgrave, Michael, Kawharu, Merata, and Williams, David, eds. Waitangi Revisited: Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi. Oxford: University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Eakin, Hugh. “Treasure Hunt: How a Rare Statue of Aphrodite Became the Focus of the Fight Over Antiquities, and Led to the Fall of a Getty Museum Curator.” New Yorker, December 17, 2007.Google Scholar
Geismar, Haidy. “Alternative Market Values? Interventions into auctions in Aotearoa-New Zealand.” Contemporary Pacific, forthcoming, Spring 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geismar, Haidy, and Herle, Anita. Moving Images: John Layard, Photography and Fieldwork on Malakula Since 1914. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Hann, C. “Introduction: The Embeddedness of Property.” In Property Relations, edited by Hann, C.. Cambridge: University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Humphrey, C., and Verdery, K.. “Introduction: Raising Questions about Property.” In Property in Question: Value Transformation in the Global Economy. New York: Berg, 2004.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, D. “Why Sanctions Seldom Work: Reflections on Cultural Property Internationalism.” International Journal of Cultural Property 12 (2005): 393–423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacGregor, Neil, 2004. “The Whole World in Our Hands.” Guardian Review, July 24, 2004.Google Scholar
Mead, S. M.Te Māori: Māori Art From New Zealand Collections. New York: Abrams, 1984.Google Scholar
Muscarella, Oscar. The Lie Became Great: The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures. New York: Brill Academic Publishers, 2000.Google Scholar
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Icons Ngä Taonga: From the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Wellington, New Zealand: Te Papa Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Newton, Douglas. “Old Wine in New Bottles and the Reverse.” In Museums and the Making of “Ourselves”: The Role of Objects in National Identity, edited by Flora Kaplan. Leicester: University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
O'Regan, G. “Bicultural Developments in Museums of Aotearoa: What Is the Current Status?” Report: Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa & Museums Association of Aotearoa New Zealand, 1997.Google Scholar
Sheeran, G. “Māori Plea Dampens Cloak Auction.” Sunday Star Times, March 31, 1996, edition A, page 1.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Laurence, and Edwards, Alison. Stewards of the Sacred. Cambridge: Harvard University, 2004Google Scholar
Tapsell, Paul. “From the Sideline: Tikanga, Treaty Values and Te Papa.” In Waitangi Revisited: Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi, edited by Belgrave, Michael, Kawharu, Merata, and Williams, David. Oxford: University Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Watson, P., and Todeschini, C.. The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's Greatest Museums. New York: Public Affairs Publishing, 2006.Google Scholar
Williams, P. “Te Papa: New Zealand's Identity Complex.” New Zealand Journal of Art History 24 (2003); 81–97.Google Scholar
Williams, P. “A Breach on the Beach: Te Papa and the Fraying of Biculturalism.” Museum and Society 3 (2005): 81–97.Google Scholar
Wylie, A. “The Promise and Perils of an Ethic of Stewardship.” In Embedding Ethics, edited by Meskell, Lynn and Pells, Peter, 47–68. London: Berg Press, 2005.Google Scholar