A dancer performed in this mask, called tatanua, at the concluding malagan funerary ceremony. Held long after the burial, performances at this commemorative event sometimes featured several dancers wearing tatanua masks and always included music and singing. The distinctive fiber crest is a defining feature of such masks.

The organizer of a malagan ceremony often commission men to perform. These events are typically open to the public, sometimes drawing large crowds of family and community members, as well as attracting people to come from neighboring areas.

This mask was constructed in a helmet style similar to the tatanua masks on view nearby, but with short pieces of wood sticks extending out from the painted white surface. Facial features of this mask highlight attention to patterning on the skin, large eyes, and open mouths with prominent teeth. 

This mask’s structure differs from other masks on view and may have been used at another type of ceremony. In particular, note the maker’s approach to designing facial features, the addition of narrow vertical pieces of wood in front of the face, and the use of an earth-toned color palette.

Masks for malagan ceremonies were traditionally made with many materials locally available in New Ireland, including wood, fibers, and shells inlaid in the eyes. Some later examples of tatanua masks made in the twentieth century featured imported materials, such as machine-made fabrics, reflective of societal changes and shifting trade patterns that brought different materials to New Ireland.

The elaborate carving and painting on this mask show evidence of how multiple people often contributed to a mask’s production in communities of New Ireland practicing malagan ceremonies. A carver would create the wood structure, and a different maker added the various painted elements. Some scholars note that the man who commissioned the mask often painted the mask’s designs.

Malagan funerary ceremonies involve a series of events and performances to honor the deceased. For New Irelanders, such ceremonies celebrate the lives of those who have passed as they mark the transition of a deceased person into an ancestor. Malagan ceremonies are also significant for altering trajectories of living people; they are spaces for participants to gain status, re-evaluate relationships, and negotiate land ownership. The type of masks on view often appear during the concluding ceremony. Performers dress in elaborate regalia while dancing to live music and singing in front of large public audiences. These ceremonies featured other artistic objects, such as figural sculptures and large memorial friezes, all of which were discarded after use. Malagan events continue in contemporary New Ireland but have changed significantly over time. The National Cultural Commission of Papua New Guinea promotes malagan festivals today to foreign visitors.

This work is an example of a tatanua mask. Its fiber crest is shaped in a man’s mourning hairstyle. Some scholars have interpreted tatanua masks as evoking idealized representations of male beauty. Visual expressions of beauty may be connected to how malagan ceremonies also act as a means for living people to acquire status and prestige.

This sculpture depicts a bird with a crest carved with a long beak and a zig-zag design on its back. Birds are a common motif in objects associated with malagan ceremonies. The piece of wood extending from the back of the bird suggests that a dancer likely used it as a mouthpiece while performing.

In the nineteenth century and later, malagan objects discarded at the conclusion of ceremonies became prized among foreign collectors. Their acquisition resulted in extending the objects’ life for purposes distinct from their original cultural use. Harold M. Sewall donated this collection of masks to the Museum in 1898, during a period when New Ireland experienced the establishment of German colonial rule (1885-1914) and an increase in foreign visitors and missionaries. Indeed, throughout the Pacific Ocean, several European nations and the United States vied to expand its territorial claims. Sewall likely acquired the objects through his diplomatic posts, including U.S. Consul General to Samoa (1887-1892) and U.S. Minister to Hawai‘i (1897-1900). Sewall came from a family well known for its work in Maine’s shipbuilding industry. Ships built in Bath traveled around the globe and were instrumental in furthering American maritime trade and exploration. European and American artists also visited Oceania during this period and created artworks that depicted these lands and its peoples.

This etching depicts the seaside landscape of Uvea, one of the Wallis and Futuna islands located near Samoa and Fiji in Polynesia that Meryon visited during his voyage on board Le Rhin. The artist illustrates a small group of people fishing, with others rowing and a ship and foliage in the background. While marine landscapes are common subjects in Meryon’s works from Oceania, he also made other drawings of Oceanic art and sculptures, especially Māori culture in New Zealand.

Meryon included subjects from Oceania in other works from this period. Of note, references to Oceanic art appear in some of Meryon’s etchings about urban life in nineteenth-century France. This etching illustrates an aerial view of the Parisian school le Collège Henri IV, also known as le Lycée Napoleon. At the back right is an individual holding a mask resembling those from New Caledonia, an area in Melanesia where Meryon visited during his travels in Oceania.

Akaroa is a town in the Banks Peninsula, located on New Zealand’s South Island. Charles Meryon spent time there during his four years of travel with the French navy in the 1840s aboard the ship Le Rhin. In this etching, he depicts a few small boats docked in calm waters as a group of people work together on the beach to bring in fish caught at sea. Drawings that Meryon created during his travels in Oceania became subjects for etchings he made later in France, as he did not learn etching until after he returned home. He developed some of his etchings into La Nouvelle Zelande, an unfinished project about New Zealand that he began in 1856 and worked on until a few years before his death.

This etching depicts a ship moving through waves crashing at sea, with birds flying nearby and two smaller boats in the distance. Meryon made this etching in France, based upon his own travels at sea with the French navy. Mulgrave Islands noted in the title refers to the present-day area of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia.

In 1926-27, American ethnologist Matthew Stirling of the Smithsonian Institution led a joint American and Dutch expedition to New Guinea, where a member of the expedition made this photograph. The representation of local people posed partially naked and smiling next to a thatched roof dwelling and the use of the word “pigmies” in the photograph’s caption exemplify how racialized attitudes shaped the practice of many early twentieth-century anthropologists and underpin the foundations of racism that persist to this day. Despite the struggle to understand and explain cultural difference, this and other expeditions from America and Europe have continued the practice of collecting cultural objects from Oceania.