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Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Galleries and Archives

Cochrane, Susan and Quanchi, Alan M. (2011) Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Galleries and Archives. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, pp. 1-16. ISBN 978-1847180841 or 10-1847180841

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Abstract

This volume investigates Pacific collections held in Australian - museums, art galleries and archives, and the diverse group of 19th and 20th century collectors responsible for their acquisition. The nineteen essays reveal varied personal and institutional motivations that eventually led to the conservation, preservation and exhibition in Australia of a remarkable archive of Pacific Island material objects, art and crafts, photographs and documents. Hunting the Collectors benchmarks the importance of Pacific Collections in Australia and is a timely contribution to the worldwide renaissance of interest in Oceanic arts and cultures. The essays suggest that the custodial role is not fixed and immutable but fluctuates with the perceived importance of the collection, which in turn fluctuates with the level of national interest in the Pacific neighbourhood. This cyclical rise and fall of Australian interest in the Pacific Islands means many of the valuable early collections in state and later national repositories and institutions have been rarely exhibited or published. But, as the authors note, enthusiastic museum anthropologists, curators, collection managers and university-based scholars across Australia, and worldwide, have persisted with research on material collected in the Pacific.

Item Type: Book
Subjects: A General Works > AM Museums (General). Collectors and collecting (General)
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Law and Education (FALE) > School of Social Sciences
Depositing User: Fulori Nainoca - Waqairagata
Date Deposited: 26 Feb 2015 00:46
Last Modified: 26 Feb 2015 00:46
URI: https://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/7763

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