Te Maori exhibition attracts interest

Press, 12 September 1984, Page 3

Te Maori exhibition attracts interest

NZPA staff correspondent New York

The first day of Te Maori exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York wound up with a reception there for more than 100 New Zealanders who flew over for the official opening yesterday. The exhibition is being well featured by the museum, with a huge banner advertising it draped above the imposing entranceway. Te Maori, which features 174 carvings drawn from 13 museums in New Zealand and one in Pennsylvania, has not been seen as one collection in New Zealand, but will be shown there after its 14 month stay in the United States. The exhibition will move on to St Louis, Missouri, in February and then to San Francisco in July. In New York, it is attracting wide news media interest. q

The head of the museum’s department of primitive art, Mr Douglas Newton, told the “New York Times” that Maori carving was “one of the great styles in the world.”

The journalist, Douglas McGill, wrote that “many experts believe that the striking and sophisticated

quality of the Maori works will surprise visitors and. give them an appreciation for the native art of the remote Polynesian islands.”' The dawn ceremony to lift the tapu from the ob-. jects on display left many people in tears, Americans as well as New Zealanders, as the spiritual significance of the exhibition sank in.

Cecelia Pakinga-Stirling, a young member of the concert party who works for the Maori Affairs Department in Wellington, said she cried as she went in for the ceremony. Removal of the tapu was necessary before the public could look at the objects without danger, and to appease the ancestors.

Other Maoris echoed her sentiments, saying the carvings were, in fact, their ancestors, not just representations of them. ;; The chairman of the Metropolitan Museum board of trustees, Mr J. Richardson Dilworth, described the exhibition as unprecedented and promised that the museum would care for the carvings and respect them.

The Minister of Maori Affairs, Mr Wetere, mentioned the debate between tribes provoked by the prospect of sending such treasured objects to the United States, and described

them as living items. He hoped, he said, that millions of Americans would be educated by them and made more aware of New Zealand.

The irrepressible Mayor of New York, Mr Edward Koch, attended Te Maori reception at the museum during the evening. Subjected to a Maori challenge, he protested “I come in peace,” and later proved it by joining the concert party, doing well with hand and body movements, and ending up rubbing noses with everyone in •sight. “I have never had a friendlier welcome,” he said.

‘ In Auckland, protest groups said that Te Maori presented an unbalanced and misleading image of the 1 Maori.

Mr Hone Harawira, 5 spokesman for the four' S' — Whitangi Action ittee, the Pacific People’s Anti-nuclear Action Committee, Mana Mo- : tuhake, and the Maori People’s Liberation Movement of Aetearoa — said that sending the exhibition to New York without consultation ignored Maori views.

The exhibition presented outsiders with an unrealistic, romantic view of Maori life, he said.