New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific at Saint Louis Art Museum

Tuesday, 15 August 2006 08:25

St. Louis, MO - The Saint Louis Art Museum announces the October 15 opening of New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific, a remarkable exhibition of art objects from a group of remote islands located in the southwest Pacific Ocean.  The exhibition opens in St. Louis, its only U.S. venue, before traveling to Paris and Berlin.  On View October 15, 2006 through January 7, 2007.

New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific explores the extraordinary creativity that abounded in the region during the 19^th century.  The exhibition’s most captivating works include beautifully made masks and stunning sculpture and represent New Ireland’s 12 known independently created art traditions.

New Ireland is best known for malagan ritual traditions, which are practiced throughout the northern part of the islands.  This ancient custom, honoring the ancestors in a family’s clan, uses carved and painted sculptures to illustrate relationships between the living and the dead.   Isolated from mainstream trends, artists drew upon their inner resources and natural surroundings to create unique works of art representative of the human soul.

Michael Gunn, associate curator of Oceanic art in the department of the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at the Saint Louis Art Museum and Philippe Peltier, senior curator in charge of the Pacific and Insular South East Asia at Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, spent more than ten years researching for this exhibition.  They examined art objects held in more than 180 museums and private collections, then traveled extensively throughout New Ireland, meeting people living in remote villages to gain a better understanding of the role these objects played in their lives.

New Ireland: Art of the South Pacific was organized by the Saint Louis Art Museum and the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, in collaboration with the Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.  The exhibition is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, which believes a great nation deserves great art.

The Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the nation’s leading comprehensive art museums with collections that include works of art of exceptional quality from virtually every culture and time period.  Areas of notable depth include Oceanic art, pre-Columbian art, ancient Chinese bronzes, and European and American art of the late 19^th and 20^th centuries, with particular strengths in 20^th century German art. The Museum offers a full range of exhibitions and educational programming generated independently and in collaboration with local, national, and international partners.

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