The galleries of Maoriland: Māori portraits, ethnological art, and the culture of the curio 1880-1910

Abstract

This thesis explores the intimate relationships between Māori objects and Māori images in the art and ethnological collecting culture of New Zealand at the turn of the twentieth century. The received art history of the period positions Māori as passive victims of colonialism who were memorialised in galleries of the dying race; by contrast, this thesis seeks to identify the activities and motives of Māori participants within this culture. The collection and exhibition of antiquities lies at its heart and, while the Māori world furnished material for Pākehā collections, Māori themselves occasionally lent objects and images for inclusion in the great exhibitions of the period. Louis J. Steele’s convincing depictions of the ancient Māori world were reliant on the study of such antiquities as well as readings in the burgeoning literature devoted to the Māori past. Nevertheless, the portrait production of Steele and other artists was dependent on direct negotiation with living portrait subjects and—in the case of Lindauer—on the direct patronage of the contemporary Māori world. I argue that the idealisation characteristic of the portraiture is also evident in the Māori passion for the performance of their culture within recreations of the ancient past.The disjunctive nature of Maoril and, as this period is known, is signalled in a discussion of the ‘curio economy’ that explores the various means—both fair and foul—by which taonga were transformed into alienated curios. Portraits, circulating in the other direction, may have ameliorated this depletion by becoming a new class of taonga, but the imperative of depiction can be identified as an oppressive regime in its own right. The corpus of colonial newspapers on which my study significantly relies is a Pākehā archive, yet is one that yields insights into Māori agency in this cosmopolitan but in-between world. An exploration of Macaulay’s durable image of the New Zealander visiting the ruins of London, originally intended as a Māori tourist but subjected to a programme of Pākehā appropriation, leads into a discussion of Māori travel and its cultural consequences. By exploring the intersections of art and ethnology, and especially by including Māori as participants and agents in colonial art history, this thesis revises the long-standing emphasis on Māori as ethnographic and artistic subjects. It makes possible a more textured and balanced view of the transactions of the late-colonial art world.