Arts of the South Seas was a singularly comprehensive exhibition of artwork from Oceanic cultures. Part of a series of non-Western, non-modern art exhibitions, it featured more than 400 works of art from Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Australia. In the accompanying catalogue, René d’Harnoncourt, the director of the Museum’s Department of Manual Industry, explained the impetus for the exhibition: although Oceanic art was relatively unknown in the West, there was great “kinship between arts of the South Seas and recent movements in modern art such as Expressionism and Surrealism.” The most imposing object in the exhibition was a replica of a stone Moai (the well-known carved heads of Easter Island); at 11 feet tall, it could not fit in the elevators and was instead installed in the Museum’s entrance hall.
Arts of the South Seas
- This exhibition is a part of 52 Exhibitions.
Publications
-
Arts of the South Seas Out of print, 208 pages
-
Master checklist 146 pages
-
Press release 1 page
-
Press release 17 pages
-
Press release 3 pages
Installation images
MoMA collaborated with Google Arts & Culture Lab on a project using machine learning to identify artworks in installation photos.
If you notice an error, please contact us at digital@moma.org.
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
All requests to license audio or video footage produced by MoMA should be addressed to Scala Archives at firenze@scalarchives.com. Motion picture film stills or motion picture footage from films in MoMA's Film Collection cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For licensing motion picture film footage it is advised to apply directly to the copyright holders. For access to motion picture film stills please contact the Film Study Center. More information is also available about the film collection and the Circulating Film and Video Library.
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication or moma.org, please email text_permissions@moma.org. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to archives@moma.org.
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to digital@moma.org.