The Collectors
Take a peek at two outstanding New Guinea art collections.
Formidable face masks, six-metre-tall carved funerary poles, ancestor skulls with ornate feather headdresses, spirit canoes, carved bone daggers, crocodile totems, striking spirit boards and much, much more. The range and exquisite quality of this art from New Guinea is breathtaking and forms the basis of two remarkable collections in the US.
The New Guinea Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Jolika Collection at the de Young Museum in San Francisco offer what many believe to be the best survey of New Guinea art anywhere in the world.
The collections are proof of the passion of American philanthropists Nelson Rockefeller, and John and Marcia Friede.
Rockefeller, the scion of one of America’s most powerful philanthropic families, four-time governor of the State of New York and vice president under Gerald Ford, was an ardent collector of indigenous art from South America, Oceania and Africa. He created the museum of Primitive Art in 1954 on West 54th street just down the road from the Museum of Modern Art, which was founded by a group of prominent New Yorkers, including his mother.
Over the course of 20 years, Rockefeller amassed one of the most important collections of indigenous art ever assembled, guided by his abiding desire to show the aesthetic excellence of what had been neglected by the major museums in the US.
The entire collection of 3500 works was transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1974, a great testament to Rockefeller’s vision of establishing indigenous cultural icons as examples of fine art, not just ethnographic curiosities.
John and Marcia Friede started collecting New Guinea art in 1965, amassing more than 4000 works, probably the largest collection of New Guinea art in private hands anywhere in the world. (John Friede is the nephew of publisher and philanthropist Walter Annenberg, who donated US$2 billion to educational establishments and art galleries in the US.)
After Rockefeller’s collection was given to the Metropolitan Museum, he essentially stopped collecting, while the Friedes continue to collect to this day with four decades of unwavering connoisseurship. They gifted about 400 works to the de Young Museum in San Francisco in 2005.
Fascinated by New Guinea’s diversity of cultures, languages and artistic styles in close geographic proximity to each other, the Friedes also love the colour and dynamism of the carvings, which reflect the fecundity of the tropical vegetation. The quality and richness of their collection, with its emphasis on art rather than anthropology, highlights just how remarkable New Guinea art is.
The New Guinea collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is part of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, which is located in the airy, light-filled 4000 square-metre Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. The Met’s New Guinea collection is particularly strong in wooden sculpture, especially from the Asmat people in the south west and the Sepik River region in the north east. Highlights include the imposing Asmat funerary poles and a soaring ceremonial house ceiling from the Kwoma people.
One reason the Asmat art collection is so strong is that Nelson Rockefeller’s son, Michael Rockefeller, took two trips to the Asmat region in 1961 where he studied and
Six items are held in trust for the Papua New Guinea government, including a trumpet, mask, female and male figures and hooks, all from
the East Sepik Province.
collected the art. Sadly, he disappeared on his second trip, with some speculation that he was killed by head-hunters. Many of his discoveries are now on show in the Michael Rockefeller wing including the funerary poles, ancestral figures, shields with powerful ancestor imagery, spirit canoes, and full-length body masks made of rattan, bark and sago leaf.
The de Young Museum has exhibited Oceanic art since it began in 1895. With the opening of the new museum building in 2005, the inaugural permanent exhibition of the Jolika Collection has thrust the art of New Guinea into the limelight. The collection is named after Marcia and John Friede’s three children, one of whom worked as a marine biologist in Papua New Guinea. It is housed in a special wing of the de Young where evocative mood lighting adds to the drama of the artwork.
The art is inspired by the natural and supernatural worlds and the rituals surrounding life’s passages. Highlights include a collection of masks as well as spirit and ancestor figures, shields, daggers, amulets, ceremonial house posts, and even human skulls. Much of the work is from the Sepik River area, renowned for its rich artistic and carving traditions.
Six items are held in trust for the Papua New Guinea government, including a trumpet, mask, female and male figures and hooks, all from the East Sepik Province.
While the Metropolitan Museum collection is largely confined to work from the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jolika collection features some outstanding pieces of considerable age.
Two artist-residency programs add another powerful dimension. The Jolika Fellowship program funds artists, museum professionals, and students from Papua New Guinea and West Papua for residencies at the de Young Museum, where they share their work with the public.
The de Young Global Fellows program funds indigenous
artists from around the world to activate the museum as a space where important cultural connections can be forged and historic collections enlivened. Art, indigenous knowledge and technology are brought together to explore the relationship of the global community to the natural environment especially the issues facing Pacific Island communities. In 2014 Leonard Tebegetu from New Ireland was the inaugural de Young Global Fellow.
Sometimes benefactors seem to create galleries as just another way to show off their wealth. But both of these remarkable collections have a completely different agenda. They seek to place the traditional art of New Guinea on an equal footing with art from the Western tradition, to show that they are worthy of being appreciated alongside Greek sculpture and Impressionist paintings.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, see metmuseum.org. de Young Museum, San Francisco, see deyoung. famsf.org.