United States Tour

When I was asked to write something in honor of the 25th anniversary of Te Maori’s opening at the Met I immediately rooted through my closet and pulled out an old paper bag. That beat up bag has moved with me from one home to another for 25 years. In it are all my pictures — images of packing the artifacts in Auckland; of arriving at the Met with the exhibition; of watching the riggers carry the crate containing the Pukeroa Gateway up the grand staircase of the Met — and many others. The first shock, on looking in the bag for the first time in ten years, was the realization that these were boxes of slides. In the age of digital cameras it was like finding daguerreotypes, and made all the more alarming by the fact that I myself was in them.

When I was the Registrar of the American Federation of Arts and, therefore, responsible for the care and handling of the exhibition during its American tour, I used to glibly sum up my role by saying, “I’m its mother.” I fussed and worried and obsessed and spent a slightly panicky two years completely preoccupied with Te Maori’s physical and spiritual well-being. For the past 25 years I think the ancestors have been repaying the favor. Though the rumpled paper bag of slides is evidence that the exhibition is long gone, I still live in the force-field of its power. I’d like to thank everyone on both sides of the world for entrusting such treasures to my care. 

Carol O'Biso