Credit for international shift belongs to Māori

Credit for international shift belongs to Māori
 

Māori are transforming exhibition spaces in museums and galleries world wide according to local academic Conal McCarthy.

Where ethnic objects were once described from a purely European perspective as ‘curios’ or ‘artifacts’ museums internationally are adopting new collaborative approaches to exhibitions, by consulting with the communities those objects came from, a process that was pioneered in New Zealand.

McCarthy sees this change as a direct result of much hard work behind the scenes by Māori, who resisted, collaborated and eventually took control of the culture of display and its treatment of their taonga (cultural treasure).

Director of the Museum & Heritage Studies programme at Victoria University of Wellington, and a former exhibition developer at Te Papa, McCarthy is the author of a new book on the subject.

“The exhibition Te Māori back in the 1980s was a fantastic example of the extraordinary success Māori have had at intervening in museum representations of their culture,” explains McCarthy, “it was an event and a cultural experience that went beyond the museum field and has had an impact on New Zealand society as a whole.”

“But the surprising thing about the history of the Māori engagement with museums goes back much further than we thought,” explains McCarthy, “to exhibitions in Philadelphia and Sydney in the late 19th century. Māori engagement with the colonial culture of display has enriched our museums and changed our way of displaying these objects,” says McCarthy.

Exhibiting Māori: A History of Colonial Cultures of Display by Conal McCarthy is published by Te Papa Press.

 
 
 
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