Maori show

Dawn greeting for Maori show

At dawn, against a backdrop of skyscrapers, two hundred Maori visitors gathered at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art to open the Te Maori exhibition. The dignitar ies included tribal elders who were escorted by carvers, weavers, and dancers. Many of them carried real, or painted, facial tattoos and wore traditio nal feather capes, flax skirts and hei tiki adornments.

From the top of the steps leading to the Museum’s main entrance five Maori women cried out the eerie notes of a karanga, the Maori call of wel come.

The challenge, the greeting, and then the advance of hon ored guests took the party up the steps and into the exhibition hall where 174 of the most prized and remarkable exam ples of Maori art were dis played. With chants and prayers the elders welcomed the spirits of their gods and ancestors which, they believe inhabit the art works. The ritual also removed the tapu from the venerated objects so that they might safely be seen by the general public and asked the blessings of the gods on the exhibition so that all who saw it might understand it.

Ten years of negotiation pre ceded the staging of this exhibi tion in the United States. It is the first time these national treasures have been allowed out of New Zealand.

The exhibition was organised by the American Federation of Arts and the New Zealand government, the Maori nation, and the lending museums of New Zealand. Finance came from grants from the Mobil Oil Company and the National En dowment for the Arts.

The exhibits range in size from the 13ft high elaborately carved Pukeroa Gateway which once led to a Maori fort, down to the elegant simplicity of tiny carved bone fishhooks. Each is unique and precious. All exem plify the unique qualities of Maori art.

Not since the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing of

Primitive Art, featuring work from Oceania, Africa and the native Americas, and related Pacific events (see PIM June, ’B2 and Jan ’B3), have New Yorkers been treated to such a plethora of Pacifica as is cur rently available, for New York city was also host to a festival of Maori films, including the 1948 classic, Rewi’s Last Stand and the contemporary Uto.

Other New York galleries were also at the same time featuring the works of 17 contemporary New Zealand artists. Caroline Yacoe

PNG deports

missionary

after porn

conviction

“We can’t have missionaries come in here, Bible in one hand and pornographic material in the other,” said Papua New Guinea’s Acting Foreign Minis ter, Tony Bais, in May.

He was commenting on the case of Bruce Norman Down ing, 29, of Perth, Western Aus tralia, who had just been con victed by the Lae District Court for having in his possession nine pornographic magazines and a locally-produced video tape.

He was fined K5OO, in de fault three months jail with hard labor.

Downing was with the Church of Christ in Lae.

Mr Bais described him as a “bad element in the denomina tion.”

Mr Bais said his officials would revoke Downing’s visa and deport him “as soon as appropriate documents were ready”.

Mr Bais said there may be other similar cases, but he did not want to generalise and hurt other churches who were “doing a good job”.

He also warned that PNG may be forced to review its migration laws and not allow deportation appeals if for eigners abused their privileges.