Kiwiana, colonialism and New York's Met Gallery's Māori curator

The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is home to ancient and contemporary Pacific art. Photo / Supplied

New Zealander Dr Maia Nuku is showcasing Oceania to the world at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, writes Thomas Bywater.

New York is the world in microcosm. There is any kind of food, music and culture to soothe the most homesick traveller, no matter where is home.

There were more than 45000 New Zealanders and Pacific Islanders living in New York City prior to 2020.

That would make it the fourth largest island in Polynesia, by population.

From New Zealand to Rapa Nui, between Houston to 201st St, you'll find communities with links to the Pacific diaspora within the five boroughs. Although this is a tiny drop in the pond for the largest city in North America, the presence is felt in the culture of the cosmopolis.

The same can be said for the New York Met. At 185000sq m, containing two million artefacts and cultural exhibits, The Metropolitan Museum of Art - to give its full title - is America's biggest gallery. At the helm of this gallery, making sure the art of the Pacific is heard and seen, is Dr Maia Nuku.

Dr Maia Nuku, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's curator of Oceanic Art, takes pride in her Māori-English heritage. Photo / Supplied

Curator of Arts of Oceania, Nuku is currently renovating the gallery's Michael C. Rockefeller Wing to bring better understanding of the region and its art. The London-born curator of English and Ngai Tai ki Torere heritage has helped make the wing of the museum a home for Pacific Art.

She has made it a base for her "network of artists, performers, poets and writers who visit me at the museum when they are passing through New York City." The reopening of travel corridors to the world has helped re-energise the city's international Pacific arts scene. The news of the soon-to-launch Auckland to New York direct services is especially welcome, which she'll "definitely be using it to get home to Aotearoa more often."

Contemporary twist: Self portrait by Shigeyuki Kihara, 'Sima and her Eel'. Photo / File

Most recently the Met helped curate the New Zealand pavilion at the Venice Biennale with a lease of artworks by photographer Shigeyuki Kihara. The prints were part of the first solo-show by a Kiwi artist at the Met, but are part of a collection of thousands of pieces.

You'll find taonga from carved waka huia treasure boxes to the original paintings of women from Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands by French painter Paul Gauguin.

"New Zealanders interested in seeing original paintings by Paul Gauguin can visit these in The Met's European Paintings galleries, many of which feature strong Polynesian women and were the inspiration for Kihara's Paradise Camp," she says.

The paintings of Paul Gaugin in the Met Gallery have shaped generations of Polynesian art. Photo / The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery

The Pacific and Oceania is the largest catchment by area for the museum's World Art collections, covering about 165 million square kilometres. It includes indigenous, colonial and contemporary artworks.

Nuku has spoken before about the long, uneasy relationship between indigenous peoples and museums. The ethics of international art is not always so clear cut.

The carved figure of Paikea from Tolaga Bay which the New York Museum of Natural History obtained in 1908. Photo / Thomas Lunt, American Museum of Natural History Library

The neighbouring New York Museum of Natural History is home to a carved statue of Paikea the Whale Rider, originally from a whare rūnanga in Tolaga Bay.

When a small group from Whāngārā and the bay arranged to visit the carved taonga, as part of a cultural exchange in 2013, they left a small carved whale tooth as a gesture. This was promptly returned to New Zealand, after it was found to have broken the museum's policy on ivory donations and could not be accepted. The carving, however, remains in place in the New York museum.

The artefact found itself at the heart of the conversations about post-colonial museum curation, but is now as much a New York treasure as a New Zealand one. The figure helped inspire the book Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera, who wrote the story when he was consul to the US back in 1986.

Like all multicultural cities, there is a dialogue between expatriate artists and their new home. The result is new works that are uniquely New York. Should New Zealanders in the Big Apple get homesick there's plenty of Kiwiana to be seen in the streets, says Nuku.

"They can seek out hidden street art installations by Auckland-based Maori and Pacific artists Janine and Charles Williams, Benjamin Work and Askew One [from] when they visited New York back pre-pandemic."

Kiwi street artist Benjamin Work left his mark on New York after being invited to The MetFriday lecture Series. Photo / Supplied

You shouldn't be too surprised to see a tūī or frigate birds on the Brooklyn skyline, left when the artists were visiting Nuku as part of the MetFriday lectures.

She hopes that links between the two country's cultural capitals will continue to grow with the arrival of direct flights and the revamped gallery.

"When the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing re-opens in 2024, New Zealand visitors to The Met will be treated to an incredible range of artworks from across the Pacific including an important installation of taonga Māori and contemporary artists many of whom live and work in Tāmaki Makaurau."

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