Return New Ireland artwork, says PNG group

RADIO NEW ZEALAND INTERNATIONAL

A PAPUA NEW GUINEA non-government organisation is calling for traditional artworks from New Ireland Province to be repatriated.

A curator working with Malagan artworks at New Zealand’s Otago Museum says he has been told by local people that there is no need to return the pieces.

Malagan art is created as part of traditional ceremonies to honour people who have died, and is traditionally destroyed or given away.

But Jenny Homerang from the Re-Creating the Village organisation says sometimes the works are preserved to be used again

“There has never been any museum that I know of, that has tried to work with the local communities from which these objects have been removed,” Ms Homerang said.

“We’ve never had any kind of community outreach programs with the museums, or the museums with us, there’s no kind of contact with us. It’s almost as if they’re saying to us that we don’t exist.”

Comments

[Peter Kranz]

Colin - I'm not really having a go at you, but in answer to your questions.

1. Yes. The Museums of the World could acknowledge the source of their heritage collections and jointly fund decent museums in the countries of origin.

2. Yes. Research posts - as has been done elsehwere. Maybe they can get some decent groundwork done and allow students to get some real field-knowledge.

3. A trust fund set up by the pillaging museums and their host countries based on the assessed worth of their PNG artefacts. Could be a 'development project' - a true National Cultural Repository for PNG.

4. Yes of course. See the answer to point 3. This can be solved. I never noticed the aicon failing in the World Bank offices in Moresby.

5. Already answered above. I think Russia may be willing to help. See Nikolai Miklukho-Makla collection.

[Peter Kranz]

Colin - re. point 5 - the first and oldest collection of systematically collected New Guinea artefacts is the Nikolai Miklukho-Makla collection at the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Saint Petersburg) dating from the 1880s.

This was added to by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Butinov who made a life-long study of the South Pacific peoples.

Both these scientists were notable for championing the rights of indigenous people.

There's a definitive paper by the historian Aleksandr Massov 'The ethnographical observations of Russian Navy seafarers in Australia and New Guinea during the second half of the nineteenth century'. He examines accounts by surgeon Pavel Burtsev and the Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of the corvette Rynda in Port Moresby, New Guinea in 1887 and by the midshipmen V.K. Pilkin and V.P. Zotov of the cruiser Razboinik in Port Darwin in Australia in 1893. Unlike the professional ethnographers mentioned above, they reflect attitudes of the Russian society at large to 'exotic' indigenous peoples at the time.

[Colin Huggins]

Peter - Yes, I think artifacts should be stored in the country of their origin but some questions:

1. If as you suggest the museums of the World fund a building which can look after these artifacts, who will ensure that the building will be maintained correctly?

2.Do these museums send staff from their museums?

3. If so, who pays the salaries, accommodation etc?

4.Doesn't the airconditioning even in Parliament House continue to break down and from previous posts the building requires at present a fair amount of repairs for it to return to its original design?

5. I have doubts about PNG artifacts being in museums in St. Petersburg unless purchased from other overseas museums? When was Tsarist Russia and then the Soviets in the islands of PNG?

I think that the artifacts should be left where they are in safe and protected custody until PNG sorts itself out politically and for the benefit of the people. Then worry about the artifacts being returned.

[Peter Kranz]

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Whilst I agree with Barbara on having the right conditions to preserve and display such artefacts, there are massive collections of PNG art in European and US museums - often collected under dubious circumstances.

Some items originally bought for a few pence or even stolen are now worth tens of thousands.

The 19th century rape and pillage of Pacific art is worthy of another story. Even the NZ National museum in Auckland has some priceless collections of bilums, masks, carvings and canoes, some 100 years old. Not to mention items to be seen in Berlin, Paris, London, Petersburg, New York etc.

(Yeah I know - I'll get writing.)

Western nations could fund an appropriate rebuild of the PNG national museum and provide on-going funding for a fraction of the worth or artworks they have in their possession.

I know there are two sides to this story, but it is sad to see historic Sepik masks and even whole spirit hauses languishing in the damp and cold of a European museum.

[George Oakes]

Barbara, I agree with you. We have recently donated our Pomio artifacts, from 1963, and the collection of Edna's father, Rev. A. Brawn from Nakanai, collected between 1932 and 1935, to the Australian Museum in Sydney.Details of them are now on the Australian Museum website.Unfortunately, PNG is not geared at present to look after artifacts in their museums and goodness knows when they will be.

[Mrs Barbara Short]

I think that PNG is not yet ready to be able to take over the responsibility of looking after these very old fragile artifacts.

Look at the situation with the National Museum and Gallery.

The country can't afford the huge costs of preservation at the moment and I think that it is better that the malagan art is safe and sound in the air-conditioned museums of Australia and New Zealand.

Wooden objects decay very quickly when exposed to tropical conditions.