Dr Gunn, senior curator of Pacific Art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, has returned to his hometown of Dunedin to spend a fortnight at Otago Museum.
He will examine and help improve documentation of the museum's collection of Malagan art from New Ireland, a group of islands which form a province of Papua New Guinea.
The museum has more than 300 pieces of Malagan art.
Malagan art is known for ritual sculptures which illustrate a person's life after their death.
Dr Gunn said the death sculpture concept was hard for Westerners to understand.
On several trips to the islands between the early 1980s and 2001, he sought to immerse himself in the culture.
His experiences shook up his beliefs, including those relating to the concepts of magic and sorcery, which were part of local culture.
"There is a lot we do not know ..."
He had been surprised to learn that the key cultural practices were very much alive and well when he became involved.
However, in recent years life on the islands had changed, partly because of mining.
After a lengthy commemoration of the person's life, the ritual sculptures were destroyed, though sometimes they were sold to foreigners, which for the islanders was akin to destroying them.
The sculptures depicted the person's life force, and various aspects of their life.
Dr Gunn was impressed with one of the museum's sculptures' unusual design. It dated from 1860 to 1870.
The museum's collection also carried Malagan masks, which were used in dramatic rituals, mainly worn by young men.
The masks depicted emotions and character in ways unknown in Western art, he said. They had a visual vocabulary which was unique, he said.
Dr Gunn grew up in Dunedin and gained a PhD in anthropology at the University of Otago, after attending Otago Boys' High School.
He has worked at museums in New York, St Louis in Missouri, and Darwin in Australia.
