Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic records are put in the service of community development and cultural renaissance.

Indigenous museums and cultural centres have sprung up across the developing world, and particularly in the Southwest Pacific. They derive from a number of motives, ranging from the commercial to the cultural political (and many combine both). A close study of this phenomenon is not only valuable for museological practice but, as has been argued, it may challenge our current bedrock assumptions about the very nature and purpose of the museum. This book looks to the future of museum practice through examining how museums have evolved particularly in the non-western world to incorporate the present and the future in the display of culture. Of particular concern is the uses to which historic records are put in the service of community development and cultural renaissance.

Robert Codrington (1830-1922) trained to be a priest at Oxford University. He volunteered to work in Nelson, New Zealand, from 1860-4 and was appointed as headmaster of the Melanesian Mission training school on Norfolk Island in 1867. He spent the next twenty years in this post and for eight of these he was the head of the Mission travelling through the Melanesian region. Throughout his time in the region he attempted to gain an ethnographic understanding of the people whom he was serving. To this end he studied local languages and translated scriptures into Mota, the lingua franca of the Mission. However, for Codrington material artefacts were fundamental to his understanding of Melanesian life. He took a lively interest in material culture as a collector and donated objects to a number of museums, including the British Museum and The Pitt Rivers Museum. His specialist knowledge made him a valued informant for scholars of Melanesia who regularly consulted him. He is regarded today as one of the founding scholars of Pacific anthropology. This book intends to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how Codrington formed his collection, through the study of his written anthropological works, correspondence with other collectors and scholars and particularly through the private correspondence with his brother and his five journals written between 1867 and 1882. The book also highlights his equally important contribution to the development of material culture studies in the region and how his work has influenced Melanesian studies to the present day.

Why has Asmat art, from a remote and small south-coast West Papuan society, had such a significant and prolonged impact on the world stage? This book explores the way major collections were made and examines the motivations of the collectors, their relationships with those from whom they purchased and the circumstances of the exchange. It also considers the involvement of artists and film-makers, anthropologists, representatives of the civil authorities and missionaries. Asmat artists have maintained their unique appeal through constant stylistic innovation and by engagement with new publics, both locally and internationally, as exemplified by the recent displays of women's weaving alongside the men's carved wooden shields, drums and figures. Despite accelerating social changes, Asmat art continues to thrive as a compelling and transformative Melanesian presence in the global art world. 'Awe-inspiring works of Asmat art loom large in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in dozens of other great museums around the world. Nick Stanley's engagingly written study provides the best history to date of the making of Asmat art traditions and of their avid acquisition by successive European and north American collectors. Most importantly, the book foregrounds the creativity and imagination of Asmat artists themselves. This is a book that will be welcomed by everyone interested in the arts of the Pacific.' Nicholas Thomas, University of Cambridge