Galleries of Maoriland

Artists, Collectors and the Maori World, 1880–1910

Roger Blackley

• Publisher: Auckland University Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781776710218
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Galleries of Maoriland introduces us to the many ways in which European colonists to New Zealand discovered, created, propagated, and romanticized the Maori world summed up in a popular nickname describing New Zealand: Maoriland. But Blackley shows that Maori were not merely passive victims; they too had a stake in this process of romanticization. What, this book asks, were some of the Maori purposes that were served by curio displays, portrait collections, and the wider ethnological culture? Galleries of Maoriland looks at Maori prehistory in European art; the enthusiasm of settlers and Maori for portraiture and recreations of ancient life; the trade in Maori curios; and the international exhibition of this colonial culture. By illuminating New Zealand's artistic and ethnographic economy, this book provides a new understanding of our art and our culture.

CHAPTER ONE

Curios and Exhibitions

IN NEW ZEALAND IN THE LATER nineteenth century, a ‘curio’ was a historic or exotic artefact – a cultural object that by its novelty, rarity, or sheer strangeness summoned various types of distance, whether geographical, temporal, or cultural.¹ Commenting on a proposed loan exhibition to support the inauguration of the town’s Technical College, the Feilding Star noted that:

Nearly every home contains a work of art or a curio that no other home in the same town possesses – a painting, a photograph of something unique, an ancient weapon from the Old World or the New, Maori relics of value, rare coins, birds, beasts, mechanical novelties, carvings, and a thousand and one other things that would interest other people.²

A curio might be a specimen of contemporary exotica – even a paper artefact such as the translation of the New Testament into Chinese proudly displayed by a returned missionary – but more usually it took the form of an antiquity.³ Ancestral items from Europe and elsewhere played prominent roles in so-called ‘curio courts’ at a host of popular exhibitions staged by New Zealand settler communities.

Most often, however, the term ‘curio’ was used to refer to Māori objects that had moved into Pākehā possession, whether in private hands or in a museum. Like ‘taonga’, today’s catch-all term for Māori objects (and its supposedly more neutral predecessor, ‘artefact’), ‘curio’ could refer equally to antiquities and to items of recent manufacture, to great treasures as well as relatively inconsequential knick-knacks produced for consumption by tourists. The Māori curio supported a widespread antiquarian and ethnographic collecting milieu comprising dedicated curio dealers, working-class fossickers, eager Māori sellers, entrepreneurial Māori artists, and a developing cohort of elite collectors who enjoyed seeing their possessions validated though inclusion in exhibitions and by acquisition on the part of museums both in the colony and abroad. A darker side to this colonial milieu emerges in a later discussion of the ‘curio economy’, the various means by which collectors obtained their trophies. That is to say, the circumstances by which taonga became curios.⁴

Edmund Walker, after J. A. Gilfillan, Interior of a Native Village or ‘Pa’ in New Zealand. Situated near the Town of Petre, at Wanganui, c. 1850, hand-coloured lithograph, 480 × 344 mm. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, C-029-001

The collection of Māori material culture had commenced at the earliest contacts with European voyagers, with such objects today inhabiting a prized ethnographic status on the strength of their presumed freedom from European influence.⁵ Māori objects were integral to New Zealand’s offerings exhibited in the great commodity displays of the later nineteenth century, beginning with a modest array presented at London’s Great Exhibition of 1851. The most interesting collection came from a former New Zealand settler, F. G. Moore, which included a lithograph of J. A. Gilfillan’s lost painting, Interior of a Native Village or ‘Pa’ in New Zealand, Situated near the Town of Petre, at Wanganui, together with:

Six water-colour drawings and six steel engravings of New Zealand subjects. Four native mats or garments. One greenstone Mari [sic] or chief’s club. Three specimens of greenstone. One carved box. One war-club. Native fishing net and fishing hooks. Two bottles of insects, Specimens of native grasses. Large map of New Zealand.⁶

Indeed, the lens of exhibitions offers a prime mode by which to chart the identities of collectors as well as the kinds of objects they possessed. In the colony, ‘curio’ displays featured regularly in civic exhibitions such as those hosted by Mechanics’ Institutes, harbingers of the library and the museum. In 1853, for example, choice examples from Sir George Grey’s first Māori collection were lent by Lady Grey to the May Conversazione of the Wellington Athenæum and Mechanics’ Institute.⁷ This viceregal example was followed by innumerable other citizens who enthusiastically participated in what can be termed the ‘culture of the curio’. The splendid exhibition of Fijian and Māori ‘curios’ in the Fine Arts and Industrial Exhibition, mounted at Christmas 1873 by the Auckland Mechanics’ Institute, included a collection lent by Adam Brock, a solicitor. One of Brock’s exhibits evidences the sensational provenance often asserted in these contexts: ‘a carved pipe . . . once the property of the arch-savage Kereopa . . . which retains the native darkness and horrible tattooing of its native owner’.⁸

The culture of the curio can be seen in action at the hugely ambitious New Zealand Exhibition staged at Dunedin in 1865, which emulated the Great Exhibition by dividing exhibits into three sections comprising Raw Materials, Machinery, and Manufactures. Curios inhabited the final category of Manufactures, featuring objects lent by a range of Pākehā collectors (including the Rev. Carl Völkner of Ōpōtiki, whose sensational murder occurred while the exhibition was still running) but notably also by Māori chiefs. Tāreha Te Moananui – the Ngāti Kahungunu leader who would in 1868 become one of the earliest Māori Members of Parliament – lent a finely woven cloak and a taiaha trimmed with kākā feathers, ‘formerly used as a war weapon, [but] now to flourish about when haranguing’.⁹ Sir George Grey, serving as Governor for a second term, lent an impressive collection of ‘native curiosities, among which are several antique specimens, and some which belong to history, as the signs of subjection by important chiefs, presented to Sir George as the representative of majesty’.¹⁰ However, despite the tantalising interconnections that can be glimpsed in the published catalogue – for example, Tāreha’s appearance in photographs exhibited by Swan and Wigglesworth, both ‘in Native Costume’ and ‘in European Costume’ – the Māori collections were dispersed throughout the provincial courts.¹¹

This situation would change in the 1880s. The exhibitions surveyed in this chapter – ranging from art displays staged in Auckland to large-scale expositions in London and Dunedin – reveal an important new direction in the collection and display of Māori material culture. No longer were ‘curios’ to be heaped in essentially meaningless profusion, marked by little more than an indication of ownership or details of extraordinary provenance. Instead, Māori objects were positioned as ethnographic artefacts and co-opted into evolutionary narratives that simultaneously served both settler-nationalist and aesthetic purposes.

NEW ZEALAND ART STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION

The Art Students’ Association, established in late 1883, was an overtly nationalist grouping of artists seeking to promote a local school of art, the achievement of which they believed would require close engagement with the heritage of Māori art. Speaking at a meeting in December of that year, the president, Kennett Watkins, addressed the burning issue of New Zealand’s increasing loss of historical Māori art:

We New Zealanders are doubtless aware that the greatest achievements of the Maori artists have been hunted up and sold to strangers, or otherwise have been stolen to furnish foreign museums. A New Zealander would be astonished at the number of ancient carved weapons and implements belonging to the New Zealand of the past in Berlin, at Vienna, and at Paris, to say nothing of the British Museum.¹²

Watkins asserted that Māori art belonged to New Zealand, ‘and will be the only relic of the Maori race left, besides that which we hope to do for it in other respects – that is, to observe and record what yet remains of the ancient manners and customs . . . herein lies our duty, and the true direction for our study’.

The Art Students’ Association was formed in rivalry with the Auckland Society of Arts, whose exhibitions were bolstered by loan collections of European art that enabled the display of cultural capital on the part of elite ‘non-artist’ members. By contrast, the Art Students proposed to show their work in tandem with Māori art, calling in July 1884 for ‘all who may be in possession of Maori carvings, weapons, mats, &c., to oblige by forwarding same for exhibition as a loan collection’.¹³ Despite doubts that this would even prove possible, given the predations of foreign collectors and museums, a mass of choice specimens poured into the Choral Hall from a range of local collectors, including Captain E. H. Northcroft, Miss Ring, and Messrs Seymour George and C. O. Davis. A listing of work lent by Davis, a Land Purchase Agent who had arrived in the colony around 1831, suggests the choice nature of the collection that would enter the Auckland Museum on his death in 1887:

. . . [A] basket made of feathers; Maori antimacassar; old Maori girdle, made of flax leaf; a trap to catch brown parrots; a cloak for the shoulders, dyed black from the bark of the hinau, and then plunged into chemical mud well known to the Maoris; a mat trimmed with feathers of the wood hen; weapons made from the bone of a whale; fancy basket, used by the chief women for their treasures, and also used to hold calabashes of preserved birds when presented to distinguished guests; mat made from kiwi feathers; box for holding ornaments for the hair; carved clubs, &c.¹⁴

An exhibition of living Māori ‘specimens’ was also planned: ‘Mr. Davis intends to secure the attendance of two ancient specimens of the Māori race, so as to give a realistic surrounding to his fine collection of native curios.’¹⁵ Several Māori visitors arrived with Davis on the following day, when – ‘in their European dress’ – they inspected the collection and particularly admired the inlaid scenes of Māori life by Anton Seuffert. Plans to exhibit two of them in the evening, however, were thwarted when the Choral Society required their hall.¹⁶ Though scheduled to return ‘in full costume’ the following evening, the two Māori chiefs – ‘to the infinite disgust of both management and audience’ – failed to make an appearance.¹⁷

The 1884 Art Students’ exhibition was judged a success and plans were hatched for a similar loan collection in the following year. This time there would be prizes offered for drawings of Māori carvings and cloaks, ‘together with scale drawing of a war canoe, and also for the best picture of a Maori pa in the olden time. These should bring out some good work, and prove of interest to collectors of Maori curios.’¹⁸ The October 1885 exhibition offered an even more spectacular assembly of Māori art, with loans negotiated with C. O. Davis, Judge Monro, R. C. Barstow, J. R. Smith, and Adam Cairns.¹⁹ As in the case of the first exhibition, there is no surviving catalogue and newspaper commentaries provide the sole source of information on the show. There we learn that Cairns, a city councillor and the proprietor of the Star Hotel, lent an important canoe bow carving that the Art Students insured for £150, which complemented the stern carvings lent by Barstow.²⁰ Between the carvings was placed a ‘fine model of a Maori head executed in kauri gum . . . artistically arranged with blanket, &c. so naturally, that it has the appearance of a native standing up in his canoe’.²¹

Josiah Martin, Mohi Te-Ahia-Te-Ngu, c. 1885, albumen photograph, 205 × 151 mm. AUCKLAND ART GALLERY TOI O TĀMAKI, PURCHASED 1973

The newspapers also reveal that, in addition to the contemporary art displayed by the members, there was an accompanying loan collection of Māori portraits that provided a point of interest for the authentically attired Māori who finally made an appearance at the exhibition:

A Maori, old Mohi, was present on Saturday night, decked in mat [cloak] and feathers, and carrying taiaha and mere. He took much interest in the Maori portraits by Mr. Lindauer (lent by Mr. Partridge), and to the amusement of onlookers, took as many as possible to admire his own portrait, e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Curios and Exhibitions
• Chapter Two: Māori Prehistory
• Chapter Three: Portrait Galleries
• Chapter Four: Performing the Ancient Past
• Chapter Five: The Curio Economy
• Chapter Six: Problems with Portraits
• Chapter Seven: Pākehā Propaganda
• Chapter Eight: Cosmopolitan Maoriland
• Chapter Nine: Maoriland in Focus
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright