Exhibiting Maori: A History of Colonial Cultures of Display

Description

This title cannot be sold by Berg to customers in Australia and New Zealand. Customers in these countries can purchase this title from Te Papa Museum Press in New Zealand.This richly illustrated book presents a comprehensive assessment of the display of Maori culture from the nineteenth century to today. In doing so, Exhibiting Maori traces the long journey from curio to specimen, artefact, art and taonga (treasure). Drawing on extensive and groundbreaking research, Exhibiting Maori reveals for the first time the remarkable story of Maori resistance to, involvement in, and eventual capture of the display of their culture.Ranging across museums, world fairs, fine art and tourism, Exhibiting Maori fuses museum studies, anthropology, and visual and material culture to uncover a history of active Maori engagement with the colonial culture of display.

Conal McCarthy is Director of the Museum & Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

'A landmark history of how indigenous art and culture was exhibited at world's fairs and in museums. McCarthy is in an ideal position to trace the ways in which Maori objects have figured in New Zealand's self-fashioning from 1865 to the present. What sets this work apart is the unique perspective that emerges from historical sources in the Maori language.' Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, author of Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage '...[Exhibiting Maori] is written in a direct and engaging style...[W]hat it will do, or should do, is encourage a reassessment of colonial relations in New Zealand--a mere modest, but non-the-less very considerable achievement.' Jeffery Sissons 'Exhibiting Maori takes us on a thoughtful and meticulously documented journey that charts the changing role of Maori in the exhibition of their culture from one of dispossession and resistance, through active participation to eventual possession.' Tristram Besterman