Coordinating the Tour

At the time of Te Maori I was Director of Auckland Art Gallery. We were really the only museum in New Zealand involved in mounting international exhibitions at the time. So that qualification, plus the Metropolitan Museum New York’s determination to present Maori art outside the usual ethnographic context, seeing the objects as works of art, albeit works of art saturated with meaning and connection, conspired to create a pivotal role for Auckland Art Gallery.

We collected the taonga from all over the country, working with Cyril (then, Squirrel) Wright and the Americans, we packed them and then despatched them to the United States. We were a member of the Management Committee chaired by Kara Puketapu, then Tamati Ready; worked with Piri Sciascia; and collaborated with Mobil on the marketing of the exhibition, and Heinemann (the Gallery’s publisher at the time), on the publication of the book. When the return was planned, Auckland Art Gallery became the organising institution for the national tour. We put together a team, dedicated to the exhibition and drawn from the staff of all exhibiting galleries/museums, to install and dismantle the exhibition at each venue. We then carried out all the logistical management of moving the exhibition from venue to venue, installing and breaking it down, and, finally, dispersing the taonga back to their homes. We collaborated with all parties involved in the presentation of such a major event, and we were intimately involved in the cultural management of the exhibition, directed by Piri Sciascia and orchestrated by the regional committees of Iwi.

Nobody at the time was in any doubt that we were experiencing history happening. Te Maori transformed the thinking of museums in the first place, but New Zealanders as a whole. It was a huge galvanising focus for Maoridom. It presented all sorts of challenges – some could be dealt with, with lashings of good humour; some were the subject of close negotiation; some were the subject of rivalry and even anger; all were vivid. It was an exhausting and overwhelmingly enriching time. Lives were changed – Pakeha as well as Maori. Nothing was the same again. I count myself privileged to have been invited to take on the role of logistical coordination and management. I will never forget it, and my life was one of those that was changed by the experience.

Rodney Wilson