Oceanic Art | Winter 2025 Reading List
Atua: Sacred Gods of Polynesia
Michael Gunn
This volume investigates the visual and spiritual manifestations of atua, or deified ancestors, across Polynesia, revealing the intricate interrelations between religion, artistry, and chiefly power. Drawing from major collections, it examines how sculptural forms mediated divine presence and social hierarchy. Atua: Sacred Gods of Polynesia stands as a pivotal contribution to Oceanic art history, uniting theological insight with aesthetic interpretation.
Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections
Sidney Moko Mead
Published to accompany the landmark international exhibition, Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections redefined global perceptions of Māori art as a living cultural tradition rather than an ethnographic curiosity. Mead’s essays emphasize mana and whakapapa as structuring concepts of form and lineage within carving and weaving. Its scholarly and political resonance continues to shape the museological representation of Indigenous art worldwide.
Oceania
Peter Brunt, Nicholas Thomas, Noelle Kahanu, Emmanuel Kasarhérou, Sean Mallon, Michael Mel, and Anne Salmond
A sweeping synthesis of Oceanic visual culture, Oceania presents the region’s art as both historically grounded and dynamically contemporary. Essays by leading scholars trace themes of navigation, identity, and encounter from ancestral objects to modern Pacific practice. The catalogue’s interdisciplinary vision underscores Oceania as a site of enduring aesthetic and intellectual innovation.
Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Ali‘i
Leah Pualaha'ole Caldeira, Christina Hellmich, Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Betty Lou Kam, and Roger Rose
This work explores the regal artistry of Hawaiian featherwork, an elite practice that fused cosmological symbolism with political authority. Through lavish photography and rigorous historical analysis, the authors reconstruct the sacred contexts of ‘ahu‘ula and mahiole regalia. Royal Hawaiian Featherwork: Nā Hulu Ali‘i exemplifies the integration of material culture study with Indigenous epistemologies of status and protection.
Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760–1860
Steven Hooper
Hooper’s seminal study situates Polynesian art within the epochal transformations of early European contact and missionary encounter. Combining ethnographic sources with aesthetic analysis, he reveals how objects of divinity, diplomacy, and exchange mediated cross-cultural understanding. Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760–1860 remains foundational for interpreting art as a nexus of power, ritual, and colonial dialogue.
New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific
Michael Gunn
This comprehensive monograph examines the art of New Ireland, particularly the malagan funerary tradition, as an expression of social renewal and ancestral veneration. Gunn contextualizes sculptural form within cycles of memory, death, and identity. New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific is a benchmark in the study of Melanesian aesthetics and ritual performance.
Power and Prestige: The Art of Clubs in Oceania
Steven Hooper
Focusing on a single yet symbolically charged object type, this catalogue demonstrates how clubs functioned as extensions of rank, artistry, and cosmology across Oceania. Essays reveal the sophisticated craftsmanship and regional diversity embedded in these seemingly martial forms. Power and Prestige: The Art of Clubs in Oceania reframes Oceanic weaponry as vessels of social meaning and creative mastery.
Art of the Solomon Islands: The Barbier-Mueller Collection
Deborah Waite
This catalogue brings together one of the world’s finest assemblages of Solomon Islands sculpture, weaponry, and adornment. Waite situates each object within complex systems of exchange, warfare, and ancestral invocation. Art of the Solomon Islands: The Barbier-Mueller Collection exemplifies the curatorial precision and aesthetic sensitivity that define the Barbier-Mueller corpus.
Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands
Eric Kjellgren
Kjellgren examines the Marquesan aesthetic system as one of unity and repetition, where pattern and tattooing extend the body into sacred design. The book situates Marquesan art within broader Polynesian genealogies while emphasizing local innovation and vitality. Through elegant analysis and visual documentation, Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands captures the profound integration of art and identity.
New Guinea Art: Masterpieces from the Jolika Collection
Virginia-Lee Webb
A monumental survey of the Jolika Collection at the de Young Museum, this work presents New Guinea’s extraordinary diversity of form and style. Essays explore the interplay of ritual, exchange, and regional aesthetics across the island’s cultural landscapes. New Guinea Art: Masterpieces from the Jolika Collection is both a visual compendium and a critical contribution to Melanesian art history.
Arts of the South Seas: Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Melanesia
Douglas Newton
Spanning the full geographic expanse of Oceania, this volume situates the Barbier-Mueller holdings within an art-historical and ethnological framework. Arts of the South Seas: Island Southeast Asia, Micronesia, Polynesia, Melanesia traces continuities of form and belief across the island world, emphasizing the dynamism of local traditions. The publication’s breadth and visual depth make it an essential comparative reference.
Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific
Steven Hooper
A major synthesis of Fijian visual and material culture, this volume explores art as a medium of life-cycle ritual, chiefly display, and spiritual continuity. Through extensive field research and collaboration with museums, Hooper illuminates the resilience of Indigenous form in colonial and postcolonial contexts. The holistic perspective of Fiji: Art and Life in the Pacific bridges anthropology, art history, and living tradition.
Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island
Eric Kjellgren
Splendid Isolation: Art of Easter Island situates Rapa Nui sculpture within the island’s austere environment and distinctive cosmology. Kjellgren explores the monumental and portable forms through themes of isolation, continuity, and reverence for lineage. This focused study reframes Easter Island not as an anomaly but as a key node in Pacific artistic heritage.
Polynesia: The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art
Adrienne L. Kaeppler
This publication showcases the Blackburn Collection’s remarkable assemblage of Polynesian artifacts, underscoring their aesthetic coherence and ceremonial gravitas. Essays situate the works within Indigenous genealogies of artistry and divine descent. Polynesia: The Mark and Carolyn Blackburn Collection of Polynesian Art offers both a collector’s reflection and a scholarly meditation on the region’s sacred visual heritage.
Uli: Powerful Ancestors of the Pacific
Jean-Philippe Beaulieu
This volume examines the enigmatic Uli figures of New Ireland as embodiments of ancestral potency and transformation. Through stylistic and contextual analysis, Beaulieu reconstructs their ritual use in initiation and mortuary cycles. Uli: Powerful Ancestors of the Pacific contributes to the deeper understanding of Melanesian sculpture as a theology in form.
Korwar: Northwest New Guinea Ritual Art According to Missionary Sources
Raymond Corbey
Corbey’s research traces the history, meaning, and circulation of korwar ancestor figures from Northwest New Guinea. He situates them within colonial collecting networks and Indigenous mortuary cosmologies alike. Korwar: Northwest New Guinea Ritual Art According to Missionary Sources deftly bridges art-historical critique and anthropological sensitivity.
Ancestors of the Lake: Art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea
Virginia-Lee Webb
Webb presents the sculptural and ornamental traditions of Lake Sentani as expressions of ancestor veneration and artistic individuality. Through archival research and museum study, she situates the works within both ‘pre-contact’ practice and modernist reception. Ancestors of the Lake: Art of Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay, New Guinea bridges Indigenous creativity with the global history of collecting.
Shadows of New Guinea: Art from the Great Oceania Island in the Barbier-Mueller Collection
Philippe Peltier and Floriane Morin
Shadows of New Guinea: Art from the Great Oceania Island in the Barbier-Mueller Collection focuses on the expressive and enigmatic sculptural forms of New Guinea as held in the Barbier-Mueller Collection. The essays evoke the spiritual depth and diversity of Melanesian form, emphasizing shadow as both visual and metaphysical motif. The work stands as a meditation on the interplay of presence and absence in Oceanic art.
Nukuoro: Sculptures from Micronesia
Christian Kaufmann and Oliver Wick
A monographic study of the celebrated tino aitu figures of Nukuoro Atoll, this book documents their rarity, stylistic refinement, and ritual significance. Nukuoro: Sculptures from Micronesia reconstructs their cultural context from fragmentary early records and museum holdings. The publication elevates these sculptures as among the most transcendent achievements of Pacific art.
New Guinea Highlands: Art from the Jolika Collection
John Friede, Terence E. Hays, and Christina Hellmich
Dedicated to the art of New Guinea’s highlands, this catalogue reveals a world of mask, figure, and ornament grounded in exchange and spiritual potency. The essays illuminate both the material intelligence and social choreography behind each object’s creation and use. New Guinea Highlands: Art from the Jolika Collection extends the documentation of Melanesian creativity into the mountainous heart of the island.
Oceania: The Shape of Time
Maia Nuku
In this publication, Nuku reinterprets Oceanic art through the lenses of temporality, mobility, and Indigenous agency. The book connects ancestral forms to contemporary Pacific practice, reframing “tradition” as a continuum rather than a category. Oceania: The Shape of Time stands as a paradigmatic statement of de-colonial curatorship and Oceanic futurity.
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