Search for lost art part of ongoing passion for Māori art and architecture

Like a detective on the trail of a good lead, Prof Deidre Brown is persistent when on the search for lost Māori art. Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), a professor at Auckland University, is a renowned expert in Māori and Pacific architectural and art history, housing and indigenous design. She has spent many years searching New Zealand and overseas museums for 19th century Māori woodcarvings so they can be included in the story of Māori art. [Missing Credit]'Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art'. Much of her research on that and other projects helped inform Toi Te Mana: An Indigenous History of Māori Art, (2024), an international award-winning book she co-authored with Ngarino Ellis, another 19th century wood-carving specialist, and the late art historian Jonathan Mane-Wheoki. “One of the discoveries in the book was that I found a suite of carvings that were thought to have been lost that had been sent offshore by the missionary Thomas Kendall in 1823.” Kendall sent 18 whakairo rākau (Māori wood carvings) in three consignments from the Bay of Islands to the church’s Missionary Society Museum (CMS) headquarters in London. It was through Kendall’s papers held at Dunedin’s Hocken Library that the basis for understanding Māori woodcarvings had been discovered and published by the historian Judith Binney. “All that was known about them was quite a lot of writing that he did about them and how they were connected to the spirituality of Māori living in the Bay of Islands.” But the papers also held the key to finding the lost works — a numbered list that connected all the carvings. Each carving had Roman numerals carved into them when they arrived at the museum in London at Kendall’s instruction in a letter. “It took eight years within the project, but I managed to locate them, and they’re all over the world now.” Brown, who trained in architecture and is known for establishing the history of Māori architecture, found the three whakairo rākau in museums in Switzerland and Germany. Further searching uncovered the rest of the carvings in the Canterbury Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Tūhura Otago Museum. [Missing Credit]One of the missing carvings, a taurapa (stern-post) from the Oldman Collection, discovered at Tūhura Otago Museum. Photo: Otago Museum. Tūhura Otago Museum’s carving is a taurapa (stern-post). “It was really satisfying to kind of close the loop, because they’d been declared lost in the late 1960s. Nobody could find where they were. And then to actually see what they look like, and then marry them up against the text from the Hocken Library and finally understand what he was trying to describe, because it’s in quite abstract terms.” Her research has uncovered how the carvings survived the upheavals of long sea journeys and conflicts from the Musket Wars to both world wars. For more than 80 years they were in the possession of the CMS in London, some exhibited in Paris and perhaps taken on tour with others to further missionary exhibitions and meetings but little is known about this time. “We don’t know how they left, but we know who took them out. And then they onsold them to a collector, who then onsold them to museums around the world.” Along the way they had become disassociated from each other. “So, being able to bring them back together and say this is carving from this point in time was so good.” It was extra special for Brown who had been using the Kendall material as the basis for some of her classes at the University of Canterbury. “I was convinced they were lost.” However, while doing some research on mission influence on Māori art, she had come across a Roman numeral on a carving. “I’d seen it published 20 years before and remembered that it had a Roman numeral carved on it. And I thought that was to do with something else.” [Missing Credit]The Roman numeral that linked a taurapa (stern-post), from the Oldman Collection. Photo: Otago Museum. There had been a popular period in the mid-19th century for carving Roman numerals so she thought it was that. Then one day she wondered if it related to Kendall’s list. “I started digging a bit more and found carvings that were sold at the same time from this collector and then had this task of writing to museums without trying to sound like [Da Vinci Code author] Dan Brown, saying, can you look on your carving and see if there’s a Roman numeral on it?” She hoped the museums would take her seriously and they did. “They didn’t know what they were. And then all the pieces kind of fell into place and it was kind of like, mystery solved.” That is just one of the “spin-off” projects from Toi Te Mana that Brown and Ellis completed while on the 12-year journey it took to put the book together. [Missing Credit]The work of Xoe Hall (Ngāi Tahu) has a strong Indigenous and third-wave feminist presence, as is apparent in the commission for the Wakefield St i-Site mural in Wellington. Photo: WellingtonNZ The projects were needed to create the evidence for the book to ensure it had academic rigour. “That’s the joy of this sort of research work, is that you are making discoveries and you’re able to piece the parts and the stories together into something meaningful that people enjoy learning about, or it might be useful to them.” Another Otago discovery for Brown has been the Māori rock art drawings in the Waitaki Valley. While she had seen pictures of the rock art, she found seeing the art in person was eye-opening, especially its connection to the landscape it was in. “You suddenly realise this art was fully connected to its landscape, because it was made by people who were going out from their kāinga, going out from their villages, on seasonal and seasonal parties, looking for food to take home. And you could see where the awa was, where the river was. And you could see it was on a floodplain. And you could imagine the creatures that were living there, what they’d be able to collect. “And then in the evenings, they’d be going and painting these exceptional murals that we’re describing, not just the physical world around them, but the metaphysical world too and kind of populating this natural landscape.” To write Toi Mana’s chapter on rock art, Brown relied upon extensive Ngāi Tahu research on the drawings and help from Gerard O’Regan at Tūhura Otago Museum. “This is how we do Māori research now, to work with iwi, telling their stories. They’re their stories, and you need to work with them and make sure that they’re happy with those stories.” While Brown whakapapa’s to the Far North, she taught Māori art history for some years at the University of Canterbury and developed an interest in writing about and curating exhibitions on contemporary Māori art. [Missing Credit]Johnson Witehira, billboards in Times Square, New York, 2012. Photo: Johnson Witehira “The way that Ngāi Tahu have pulled together the contemporary Māori art movement and not just Ngāi Tahu makers, Māori makers who live in the South Island, and promote that work and support that work and how strongly it comes through in the collections and exhibitions of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, and come through in Christchurch Art Gallery as well, as well as regional galleries. And that level of organisation you don’t necessarily see in other parts of the country.” Brown is looking forward to sharing her work on Toi Te Mana and other projects at Dunedin Public Art Gallery this weekend. “It’s an honour to be invited. It is just such an incredible gallery.” To see: WMH Memorial Lecture with Prof Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu), Dunedin Public Art Gallery, August 30, 2pm.