Baltimore Museum of Art: Australia and Oceania

 I don't care what museum you visit in the United States, I can say with some certainty that you will rarely be able to find any works of art reflective of the historical or cultural regions of Australia, Papau-New Guinea, New Zealand or any of the multitudinous island cultures across the Pacific Ocean (Oceania).  It's taken half a century just to elevate the art of Latin America, Native Americans and Africa.  Asia is the closest thing we have to an exception, and even then we're talking about the cultures of eastern Asia: Japan, China and Korea.  

We've been taught both explicitly, but more insidiously--implicitly--that non-European Art is not really Art.  It's craft.  It's decorative.  It can be pretty, but it's not the Mona Lisa.  And this is a damnable lie.  Because it doesn't need to be the Mona Lisa to be just as powerful, as mysterious, as deserving of veneration.  Like all art, Art is the expression of the human mind and heart to capture from this world a thing that transcends this world.

When you enter the ground floor of the BMA from the Annex (Main) entrance, the corridor to the right of the help desk leads you to an area where galleries of dedicated to the art of these lesser included folks.  The Asian Galleries features works from the aforementioned trio as well as South Central Asian nations like India, Iraq and Iran.  There are two areas of African art which have over the years morphed to include both 19th century traditional works along side of contemporary works.  But the first gallery contains works obtained from Australia and Oceania.  It's a humble offering, but honestly, outside of the Seattle Art Museum, one of the few attempts at displaying works from this region I've encountered.

LEFT

"Post in the Form of a Male Figure with a Fish and a Bird," Early 20th Century

Anonymous Artist, New Ireland Province, Papua-New Guinea

RIGHT

"Chief's Ceremonial Walking Stick," 20th Century

Anonymous Maori Artist, New Zealand

DETAIL:  "Maori Chief's Ceremonial Walking Stick"

"Chief's Funerary Figure (Uli)," 19th Century

Anonymous Mandak Artist, Latengai Island, Papua-New Guinea

"Breastplate (Civa Vonovono)," circa 1820-1850

Anonymous Tongan Artist, Fiji

"Storyboard Depicting Ademei And The Crocodile," 1950-1955

Ngiraibuuch Skedong, 1917 - circa 1989

Palau

Reflection:  The moment I saw this, I was struck by the crazy cartoonish nature of the images.  They felt like caricatures of enslaved African Americans.  The entire image was both other and oddly familiar.  Then I read the backstory.  Objects like this were created to memorialize major events in the life of a community and were displayed at structures you could call community centers.  The creation of these structures ended with the westernization of island culture, though existing community centers with their storyboards remained as they fell into disrepair and were abandoned.  Skedong revived this artform; however, he also incorporated aspects derived from his love of American Comic Books.