Exhibiting Oceania: New Perspectives
A conversation with Fred Myers (NYU), Healoha Johnston (Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum), and Albert Refiti (Auckland University of Technology), moderated by Maia Nuku (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Following the recent refurbishment of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bard Graduate Center invites leading scholars to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities for international museums in presenting the arts and cultures of the Pacific. Dr. Maia Nuku (Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Curator for Oceanic Art in the Metropolitan Museum), who coordinated the reinstallation of the galleries of Oceanic art, will moderate. Taking the new exhibition as a starting point, the panelists will raise issues about art and architecture and discuss the rich conceptual values that inform the distinctive visual output and built environment produced by Indigenous Pacific and Islander communities who live and work in the vast region known as Oceania. Challenges include overcoming cultural unfamiliarity and the persistence of stereotypes, confronting the consequences of past and present colonialism, and addressing the resilience of Oceanic identities in what Tongan scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa called “Our Sea of Islands.”An Indigenous Arts in Transition Event.

November 12 at 6pm

38 West 86th Street, BGC Lecture Hall