Observations at the Met

In 1984 I was the Technical Officer in the Ethnology Department at the National Museum  and was assigned the task of documenting the taonga selected by Douglas Newton who had arrived from New York, with his wife, for the express purpose of compiling an inventory of potential touring taonga from our Metropolitan and Provincial Museums willing to contribute to this enterprise. My role concerned National Museum taonga only.
 
At the same time, and wearing my other hat, I was the International Secretary of the Pacific Arts Association and was involved with the organization of the 3rd. Symposium on the Art of Oceania to be held at the Metropolitan and be synchronized with the opening of Te Maori on September 10 in New York.
 
And so it came to pass. I was in New York for the launch but was not invited to participate in the dawn ceremony but had to be content with an official invitation to attend the 'Press' viewing at 11am that morning.
 
My abiding memory of the occasion was of the oppressive heat experienced in the gallery which reduced one to a perspiring heap but with an appreciation of the need for such a large quantity of Silica Gel in the body of the plinths and vitrines protecting the taonga.
 
Of interest to me as an ex museum preparator, of course, was the Metropolitan's use of a mezzanine gallery as a representation of a cliffside village with a palisade running the length of the balcony. The use of this forrest of sticks may have been intentional as it interrupted the view from the balcony of the Dendur Temple below in the vast Sackler Exhibition Hall, a trophy granted the Metropolitan by the Egyptian Government for assistance in the 'Save the monuments of Nubia' campaign 1960. Te Maori, the exhibition, was diminished, I felt, in comparison as an installation.
 
Before my return to Wellington I had the opportunity to visit San Francisco and evaluate the facilities available for the upcoming visit of Te Maori to that city .

 

Ross O'Rourke