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New galleries of Oceanic and Native American Art at the Metroplitan Museum of Art

Hall at the Metropolitan Museum

Hall at the Metropolitan Museum

New galleries of Oceanic and Native American Art at the Metroplitan Museum of Art

Following an extensive three-year renovation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reopen on November 14 its New Galleries for Oceanic Art, a completely redesigned and reinstalled exhibition space for the display of one of the world’s premier collections of the arts of the Pacific Islands. Divided into three separate galleries in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the 17,000-square-foot exhibition space will present a substantially larger portion of the Metropolitan’s Oceanic collection than was previously on view.

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The inaugural installation will feature more than 425 works from the five major artistic regions of Oceania – Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, Australia, and Island Southeast Asia – allowing visitors to experience the full breadth of the region’s diverse artistic traditions. The new galleries will mark the return of the Metropolitan’s most renowned Oceanic masterworks, including spectacular works of sculpture from the Asmat people of New Guinea that were collected by Michael C. Rockefeller. Greatly enhanced through the generosity of a number of private and institutional lenders, the installation will also feature many previously unseen treasures from the Museum’s collection as well as recent acquisitions.

Oceania is the collective term for the more than 25,000 islands of the Pacific, which are scattered across more than a third of the earth’s surface. The region is home to more than 1,200 different cultures and hundreds of artistic traditions.

Native American Art:

Opening: Wednesday, November 14, 2007 Press preview: Tuesday, November 13, 10 a.m. – noon

A new gallery for the exhibition of the art of Native North American peoples will open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on November 13, 2007. After three years of renovation, the enlarged gallery will display a greater number of Native American works of art than has ever before been on view at the Museum. A select group of approximately 90 works will present the art of various North American peoples, regions, and time periods in which distinct cultural, stylistic, and functional aspects will be shown. The objects range from the beautifully shaped and finished stone tools known as bannerstones that date back several millennia to a mid-1970s tobacco bag made by the well-known Assiniboine/Sioux beadwork artist Joyce Growing Thunder.

Objects to be on exhibition are drawn from the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings and from the well-known American Indian collections of Ralph T. Coe of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Charles and Valerie Diker of New York, among other lenders. The first gift of Native American objects came to the Museum in 1879, when archaeological ceramic vessels – then known as Moundbuilder and originating in New Madrid County, Missouri – were given. A decade later, the Crosby Brown Collection of Musical Instruments brought many American Indian works of diverse origin into the Museum’s collection. In the late 1970s, the Nelson A. Rockefeller collections were accessioned, forming the basis for the current installation.

The display in the new gallery will be organized by North American region and will emphasize the art of the Great Plains, located in the vast mid-section of North America, and the Northwest Coast of the continent ranging high into the Arctic along the Pacific. The peoples of the Plains, particularly those who lived in the second half of the 19th century, have come to embody the image of the American Indian in the popular imagination. That heroic image is illustrated here in various manners. Clothing, particularly the impressive, decorated animal skin shirts worn by powerful leaders as expressions of personal experience and special status, are illustrated by two examples of notable contrast. While both are chiefly embellished with porcupine quill embroidery, a unique Native American technique that consists of flattening and dying the quills, one shirt is flamboyantly hued with many added elements, while the other is restrained in color and of a well designed, austere sensibility.

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New galleries of Oceanic and Native American Art at the Metroplitan Museum of Art