The Hancock Museum's Moai Maea

Abstract

OVER THE PAST 200 YEARS the Hancock Museum in Newcastle, England, has slowly built up an ethnographic collection that now includes some 4500 items. Although there has never been a curator specializing in ethnography, it is interesting to look back and see how a succession of geologists and biologists (of which I am the latest in the series!) have fallen under the spell of these artworks. My own interest came about when I decided to spend an afternoon determining how much of the founding 18th century collection still survives. Five years later, and an Anthropology Ph.D. almost within sight, I am still burrowing into the material.