This exhibition presents some sixty powerful and graphically elaborate sculptures and thirty rare historical photographs from the Gulf province of Papua New Guinea. The sacred objects, alongside photographs that show them in context, demonstrate the deep connection between art and community life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawn from public and private collections, as well as the Museum's own holdings, many of the works are being exhibited for the first time in the only in-depth investigation of these art traditions in forty-five years. The selection of rare historical photographs—some exhibited for the first time—taken by early travelers to the Papuan Gulf is drawn from The Photograph Study Collection of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
The exhibition is made possible by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.
It was organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
