Taking a path less traveled

If you map the trips Genevieve McMillan has taken in her life, the lines dart around the globe. Then chart the paths traveled by the magnificent objects in her collection of African and Oceanic art. All the trails meet in the two-family house McMillan owns in Cambridge.

"Material Journeys: Collecting African and Oceanic Art, 1945-2000. Selections From the Genevieve McMillan Collection," at the Museum of Fine Arts through Sept. 2, highlights close to 100 pieces from McMillan's storehouse, more than 1,500 strong.

Most exhibitions of such collections are put together around themes or chronologies. MFA organizers Christraud M. Geary , curator of African and Oceanic art, and research assistant Stephanie Xatart took an original tack and built this show around the paths traveled by the collector and the objects she acquired. The setup throws into vivid relief the evolving market for African and Oceanic art and the market's role in assessing originality and value.

McMillan was born in the French Pyrenees and studied in Paris during World War II. African art had, early in the century, caught the imagination of artists such as Picasso and Braque who were captivated by its forms. By the time McMillan came on the scene in the 1940s, curators and collectors were cultivating interest in provenance, culture, and history as well as design.

The young collector's first acquisition kicks off "Material Journeys": a stunning reliquary figure from the Kota peoples in Gabon. McMillan bought it in Paris in 1945 from her mentor, the collector Madeleine Rousseau . This is the kind of work the Cubists relished, with a bold, brassy face over a wooden diamond that could represent shoulders or legs, knees cocked. Such figures were found on top of baskets in shrines. The Kota converted to Christianity around the turn of the 20th century, and the reliquaries were given away or sold. Today, African carvers make them for money .

A war bride, McMillan came to the United States by ship and would relax on deck on a beautifully carved wooden stool from the Nuna peoples of Burkina Faso. Made for a man, the stool had the beveled ribbon of a spine sweeping up its back. Already, she was ahead in the collecting game, acquiring utilitarian objects before the market for them caught fire.

The marriage, to an architect, didn't last, and McMillan moved from the Lexington home she had shared with her husband to Cambridge. She opened the Henri IV restaurant in Harvard Square, which she closed every summer to travel. She brought many treasured objects home with her; others arrived via the usual trade routes of international art (Paris, New York).

She bought an elaborately adorned hunter's tunic and hat in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Such textiles didn't interest collectors until the 1960s, when McMillan acquired this one. Worn during public celebrations, it's covered with evidence of the hunter's exploits in the form of protective amulets and mirrors to deflect evil.

Weapons became popular among collectors the following decade. A throwing knife from the Ngbaka peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which McMillan picked up in Paris in the 1970s, is a type that was still in use in the 1990s. Shaped like a sideways trident with a fourth blade projecting from its back, it's designed for accuracy.

Oceanic art is often grouped with African art in part because Westerners have approached them from the same perspective. The pathways of the objects from their places of origin have also been similar, filtered through cities in areas once colonized by Western nations.

One such city is Rabaul, New Britain, Papua New Guinea, where in 1954 McMillan came across a delightful bark cloth mask. Its eyes splay out like airplane wings; its tongue lolls from a beaky, smiling mouth. The concentric eyes are made of bamboo twigs and colored with red and black pigments. The mask, made by the Uramot Baining peoples, was used in ceremonies to summon benevolent spirits and ancestors.

Like the bark cloth mask, many of the objects in "Material Journeys" exude a sense of authenticity. But what is truly authentic in a constantly changing world, where porous indigenous societies respond not only to the market, but to what comes to hand, is up for debate.

It took a daring and original eye for McMillan to purchase a necklace in 1967 made of shell, twine, nylon thread, and pink plastic. Even today, purists would frown on such a piece, although it shares the strong composition and purpose of a necklace made just of shells and twine. It was created by a jewelry maker in Papua New Guinea, which is not a plastic-free zone. Why shouldn't it be considered authentic?

These objects tell stories of ritual, spiritual practice, family bonds, and survival. But they have more to them than that: They relate tales of colonialism, of the way we in the West have conjured the places we consider exotic, and of the impact a voracious market has had on local economies and indigenous cultures. McMillan's prescient collecting provides us an exacting and generous lens through which to examine these narratives.

Material Journeys: Collecting African and Oceanic Art, 1945-2000. Selections From the Genevieve McMillan Collection
At: Museum of Fine Arts, through Sept. 2. 617-267-9300, mfa.org