MUSEUMS ABROAD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 97, 27 April 1938, Page 8

MUSEUMS ABROAD.

ETHNOLOGY STUDY. SYSTEM USED IN CHICAGO. . MANY MAORI ARTICLES. "Jottings from other museums" perhaps would be the best description for an informal talk given last night by Mr. Gilbert Archey, director of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, to the anthropology and Maori race sec tion. Mr. Archey simply took museums from Britain, the Continent and America, and spoke of what they had done with their anthropological collections.

Mr. Archey was much impressed with the Polynesian collection at the British Museum,: but the Maori section, while containing some very fine things, win composed of smaller articles—the kind

of things which the early traders here could have "put in their bags and taken home." Relatively very few biff things had gone abroad, he said. Other provincial museums in "—land all ha', one or two Maori pieces, perhaps a canoe prow, a feather box—almost always a mere. Mr. Archey said that it would not be possible to do comparative work on the material culture of Polynesia, however, without at some time going to the British Museum.

There was one Interesting exhibit ir Budapest, he said. It was a greenstone adze, but it was labelled as coming from Tahiti. It was just possible that :t had done so, Mr. Archey said, that it had been taken from New Zealand back to Tahiti by the early Maori voyagers, but he did not think so. Munich had good collections of Maori things. In Berlin he saw a moderately large carving. It was a northern tribe type of prow piece. In Hamburg they had a pataka, but it was a comparatively modern one, perhaps 1870. Hamburg was interesting for another reason. In the museum there they had tried to show by diagram and photograph some of the modern anthropological theories. Thus there were all manner of diagrams and photographs of .different eyes, noees, faces and heads. It was all very formal, and he personally found it difficult and too involved for a public museum.

In Copenhagen he saw the new National Museum, some parts of which had been opened. In the United States, he said, ethnographical collections were comprehensive. He spent some time describing one museum, the Field Museum, Chicago, where he saw a most dramatic presentation of the early ages of man. Turning finally to Honolulu, he said that there a comparative study of the Pacific was being made. After the talk. Mr. Archey answered questions. Idi» address v.as based on his nsemc •jsait iwjpad.