LA County Museum of Art gets Oceanic collection
LOS ANGELES—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has acquired an encyclopedic collection of sculptures and artifacts from Polynesia, Melanesia and other Oceanic cultures, museum officials said.
The 46-piece collection of Oceanic art, purchased by museum trustees, includes an 18th century Hawaiian drum collected by Capt. James Cook in 1778 and a dance paddle of smooth sculpted wood from Easter Island, LACMA chief executive Michael Govan said Wednesday.
"It's really a very comprehensive collection in terms of representation across the Pacific Islands," Govan said. "Each one is a masterpiece."
The collection was acquired from the foundation of Taylor, Mich.-based cabinetry company
Masco culled the items in the early 1990s from the collection of a former Australian government officer who began assembling Oceanic art in the 1950s while serving in Papua New Guinea, said Michael Kan, who picked out the artworks for the foundation as a curator at the Detroit Institute of Art.
Govan declined to reveal the collection's purchase price, but the museum announced that it was partly financed with a $5 million challenge grant from the charitable foundation started by real estate developer Eli Broad and his wife, Edythe. Other LACMA trustees paid for the balance.
If the Broads' contribution represented half the total purchase price -- a typical arrangement for a challenge grant -- the $10 million price tag would be a bargain, Kan said. He said many of the items are unique and that it would be nearly impossible to assemble such a collection from scratch.
"It's doubtful even if you had unlimited funds that you could put it together again," he said.
LACMA plans to begin exhibiting the collection in early 2009, Govan said. It will be placed among the museum's modern art collection to illustrate the influence of Oceanic art on Dada and other modern art movements, he said.
Govan said the acquisition also represents an effort to increase the museum's coverage of tribal arts and other artworks from nonwestern regions.
"It seemed a large omission for a museum staring at the Pacific Ocean not to have an Oceanic collection," he said.
