Conal McCarthy

The rules of (Maori) art: Bourdieu’s cultural sociology and Maori visitors in New Zealand museums

Bourdieu wrote that the sacralisation of art serves to consecrate the social order by ‘enabling educated people to believe in barbarism’ and persuading ‘the barbarians of their own barbarity’. But what about the ‘primitive’ art now accepted within the canon of western art? Do the ‘rules of art’ apply to the recent success of Maori art or do Maori artists play by their own rules? This article draws on field theory to examine indigenous culture in New Zealand museums, which occupies an ambiguous position in a post-settler nation. It explores the production of ‘Maori art’ in its various forms through its display in museums: from the ‘discovery’ of traditional Maori carving in the 1980s to the ‘triumph’ of contemporary Maori art in the 1990s, before considering the reception of this art by both majority Pakeha (European) and indigenous Maori visitors. The results of research at Te Papa (the national museum) simultaneously echo and depart from the prevailing patterns of social stratification seen in Bourdieu-inspired visitor studies worldwide. On the one hand we see the emergence of a new Maori museum audience as part of a social inclusion agenda, and, on the other, the persistent elitism of fine art, which eschews the new museology’s agenda of audience development. Despite paradoxical findings which question Bourdieu’s original concepts, such as the problematic absence of a Maori audience for contemporary Maori art, the article argues that we still need a ‘social critique’ of taste and distinction. While ‘Maori art’ has made gains in the museum world, the research has equally shown that indigenous art and artists are constrained within Antipodean artistic fields because the rules of the game are stacked against them, and success for their work comes at the expense of the continued exclusion of a broad Maori audience.

“Empirical Anthropologists Advocating Cultural Adjustments”: The Anthropological Governance of Āpirana Ngata and the Native Affairs Department

In 1929, Āpirana Ngata published an article titled “Anthropology and the government of native races in the Pacific”. This would appear to confirm the link between anthropology and the rule of indigenous populations in New Zealand and its Pacific empire, but the evidence presented in this article suggests a more complex situation. This paper examines the “empirical anthropology” of Ngata and Peter Buck and the ways in which their activities reshaped the policy and practice of the Department of Native Affairs between 1920 and 1935, particularly through the notion of cultural “adjustments” or “adaptation”. Archival research reveals that behind the activities of the Dominion Museum, the Polynesian Society and its Journal was a Māori-led body, the Board of Māori Ethnological Research, which redirected government collecting, research and publication from salvage to the maintenance and revival of Māori cultural heritage in the service of tribal social and economic development. Seen through the theoretical framework of assemblage theory, we can see how a malleable idea of culture was employed in social governance in quite different ways to the colonial governmentality at work in other settler colonies at this time. The paper argues that this form of “anthropological governance” effectively de-territorialized state institutions, thereby creating a distinctive space for the native exterior to the nation.

Museums and the culture of new media: an empirical model of New Zealand museum websites

Abstract Despite the recent growth of virtual museums, we lack detailed research on the intersection of museums and new media. This study presents the results of a survey of websites of New Zealand museums and heritage organisations using an idealised model of the basic functionality required in a well-defined professional sector. When this empirical model was compared with actual websites, it was found that many functions were not fully implemented. Interviews were then undertaken with museum staff which provided insights into the social factors affecting the planning, implementation and maintenance of museum websites, which were evidently developed in a haphazard fashion. Although museum websites do reflect fundamental museum functions, the results paint a bleak picture of an uneven and fragmented field, a digital divide which disadvantages small to medium museums. The paper recommends more guidelines rather than more technology, and calls for further research into the ‘culture of new media’.

Mana Taonga: Connecting Communities with New Zealand Museums through Ancestral Māori Culture

Abstract This article considers the connections between museum collections and communities, and explores the ways in which this relationship has been transformed by recourse to ancestral Māori culture in New Zealand museums. Two case studies illustrate the application of the Indigenous concept of mana taonga at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and the Whanganui Regional Museum, which have indigenised professional practice in collection care, governance, interpretation and exhibition development. Reversing the conventional Western model of museum ownership of collections, the authors argue that the strong connections between taonga (treasures) and their descendent source communities can be used not only to acknowledge the mana (status, power, authority) of ancestral objects, but also to enhance the mana of those communities within the museum, effectively giving them a greater say in how their cultural heritage is managed.