– Customer review on 01/07/2011

The issue of who owns Pacific artefacts located in European museums and collected by early explorers has been contentious, with strong debate on either side. New ground was broken in 2006 when an exhibition opened in the Cambridge University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with contemporary Maori and Pacific artists displaying their work next to taonga collected on the voyages of Cook and Vancouver. In developing the exhibition, the curators used the analogy of the waka or Polynesian voyaging canoe - in this case bringing the people and the sounds back to the Oceanic collections in Cambridge. New Zealand was involved right from the start, as some fifteen artists helped to organise, set up and run the activities during a two-year period. The exhibition was a groundbreaking experiment in the display of Pacific art. This book features a series of essays written by those involved in this innovative exhibition.The essays show how each aspect of the exhibition was developed: from the mechanics of planning and curating to the organisational aspects of artists' visits and workshops. Colourful illustrations of artefacts and artists at work accompany each chapter. The making of "Pasifika Styles" is described from the perspectives of artists, museum professionals and scholars. This book should become a working reference for anyone involved in major exhibitions, particularly those aimed at linking museum collections with contemporary art and artists. The debate about museum collections and ownership is now less two-sided and more collaborative when you see the valuable outcomes of the Pasifika Styles exhibition.This project helped to shift the focus on utterly fixed objects unambiguously owned by individuals, communities and institutions to a more relational understanding of the dynamic links between people and things. "Pasifika Styles" heralds a new era of collaborative curatorship in ethnographic museums, who can now be seen as repositories keeping ancient art works safe so that future generations can draw inspirations from them.