Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Art Galleries and Archives.(Book review)

HUNTING THE COLLECTORS: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, Art Galleries and Archives. Edited by Susan Cochrane & Max Quanchi. Newcastle (UK): Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. xxvi, 414 pp. (Figures.) US$69.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-847-18084-1.

Given the vast quantity of Pacific Island art and material culture collected over the past 150 years, it remains somewhat astonishing how little we actually know about these items--as least as gauged by museum displays. Rarely does a label offer more than the most banal, trite statements--ethno-factoids at best. But over the past decade or so, a number of scholars from several disciplines have in fascinating ways expanded our knowledge of Pacific objects by investigating the social, political and historical milieu of specific …