MUSEUMS OF NEW CALEDONIA

THE OLD, THE NEW AND THE BALANCE OF THE TWO

A few museums and cultural centres can be visited in New Caledonia, but this snapshot of New Caledonia’s museums is centred on the two main cultural institutions dealing with Kanak culture: the Museum of New Caledonia and the Centre Culturel Tjibaou. Despite their common focus, they offer radically different forms of interpretation.

The Musée de Nouvelle-Calédonie (MNC) is New Caledonia’s oldest heritage institution. It has seen successive transformations through the nation’s history associated with changes in function and name. Beginning as the Local Museum it was to become the Colonial Museum. After a lapse of activity, it re-emerged as the New Caledonian Museum later becoming the Territorial Museum before emerging in its present form. ‘Indigenous curiosities’ and mineralogical and botanical specimens were collected for the museum in New Caledonia as early as 1863, only ten years after France took possession of the nation. This nascent collection was mostly considered as a supply of artefacts destined for international and French exhibitions to promote the colony in Europe. From 1895 to 1903, thanks to the director Julien Bernier, the Colonial Museum, housed in the same building as the library, grew through his focused collection and inventory practices. Artefacts were exchanged with other museums and ethnographic objects from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, the Marquesas Islands and Australia were acquired. Following Bernier’s death the museum was abandoned in favour of the library, and its collections were neglected until the 1940s. At this time the museum was revived and reconfigured as the New Caledonian Museum and the ethnographic collections were expanded with broader representation of the Pacific region. In 1963 the Kanak collection gathered by the anthropologists Jean Guiart and Maurice Leenhardt at the Institut de la France d’Outre-Mer was given to the museum, which opened in its current building in 1970. Mineralogical and Pacific ethnographic collections collected by the consecutive institutions, despite inevitable attrition due to poor environmental and storage conditions, were mostly put on display. Reorganised again in 1983 as the Museums and Heritage Department (Service des Musées et du Patrimoine), the museum, which had always been part of the Education Ministry, became autonomous within the local administration of the French overseas territory of New Caledonia. The natural history collections were dispersed and the museum’s ambitions were focused on Melanesian and particularly Kanak art and society. The museum is now supported by the Government of New Caledonia and invites visitors to discover local traditions as part of the Pacific region (Kasarhérou 1996, 3–5).

Situated in the centre of the city of Noumea, the architecture of the Museum of New Caledonia is typical of the 1970s. It is surrounded by a lawn planted with coconut trees and its white-washed cube-shaped buildings are interconnected with roofed courtyards and delimited by square columns and large wrought-iron gates displaying engraved rock designs. Two gardens extend the display areas of the museum out of doors. The ethno-botanical garden presents trees and plants traditionally used in Kanak and Pacific cultures. The other open-air exhibit recreates part of a customary village with an alley of local pine trees leading up to a traditional Kanak hut.

Figure 3.1. The traditional Kanak hut in the garden of the Museum of New Caledonia

© Musée de Nouvelle-Calédonie

The ground floor of the permanent display rooms presents all aspects of Kanak social life with some of the 1500 objects of the MNC Kanak collection. It is one of the world’s most significant Kanak collections, alongside that of the Basel Ethnography Museum, and well known for its holdings of traditional sculpture produced for ceremonial huts. The first floor is dedicated to cultures from other parts of Melanesia as well as Polynesia and Micronesia, the MNC having a considerable collection of Melanesian artefacts with approximately 1000 objects. The permanent exhibition is displayed according to the design from the 1980s, which features aluminium showcases and black walls. The lively tours of the Kanak guides, which connect the traditional and contemporary aspects of their culture, usually help the visitor to overlook these trappings of museological history. Once a year, a temporary exhibition of three to six months in duration gathers artefacts from the Pacific region around an aspect of social life, with ever-changing contemporary designs and efforts made at giving visitors a more dynamic experience of the museum.1

In relation to the local culture, the MNC is seen by Kanaks not only as a repository of tradition, the guardian of the indigenous ancestral culture, but also as a cemetery where objects are out of context. It is a significant place that holds powerful, special objects belonging to the dead, with most no longer used in society. That these objects are exposed to all visitors is disturbing to many Kanaks. Furthermore, the issue of Kanak objects being part of museum collections is still a sensitive one, tied as it is to colonialism and the loss of culture. Going to the museum is something most people consider with caution and some hesitancy. As elsewhere, the relationship between indigenous people from a primarily oral culture and ‘mute’ museum objects does not flow seamlessly (Kasarhérou 2003, 62). The importance of public programs to communicate and interpret culture has been acknowledged by the museum’s staff and efforts are being made to foster meaningful contact between Kanak and other people and objects. For example, activities involving elders are organised, albeit infrequently.

With regard to the scale of New Caledonia, the MNC can be seen as a large museum that has decent funding, equipment, collections and unique expertise in conservation, with the only trained conservator and conservation laboratory in the country. Its small staff, however, and the weight of its colonial inheritance impede its evolution as a vital, dynamic public institution at present.2 Hopefully this will change in the near future with the completion of the museum policy and the renewal, upgrading and extension of the building and display designs, partly funded by the French government and due to happen before 2010.

The Tjibaou Cultural Centre (Centre Culturel Tjibaou, CCT) has not inherited the same colonial history as the museum, yet it also has to engage with the various ethnic groups brought together by the colonial past and the political leaders’ will to constitute a common heritage for all to share in the future (Neaoutyine 2000). The CCT was funded by the French central government to be the headquarters of the Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture (ADCK), as one of the state’s major undertakings (known as ‘the Great Projects of the Republic’).3 By doing so, Kanak culture has been positioned as an emblem of this French territory, recognising Kanak peoples’ cultural identity while disrupting non-indigenous consciences (Neaoutyine 2000).

The cultural centre’s modern, streamlined architecture designed by Renzo Piano, architect of the George Pompidou Centre in Paris, has been renowned and celebrated since its completion. On the wooded peninsula where the Melanesia 2000 festival was held, ten wooden buildings with evocative names rise.4 Their design is drawn from that of traditional ceremonial huts. They are connected by a semi-open central passageway evoking the traditional Kanak village alley. The ‘Kanak pathway’ (chemin kanak) that meanders around the buildings through gardens and traditional huts highlights the culture’s spiritual connection with nature and introduces visitors to the Kanak identity.

The CCT opened in 1998, after three years of planning during which Kanak specialists in Kanak culture and European specialists in museology, research, communication and show business tried to place the centre as a hub of artistic creativity, influence and cultural exchange through the presentation of shows and concerts. The objectives of the CCT were and still are similar to those of the ADCK: the promotion and preservation of Kanak heritage, the encouragement of contemporary modes of expression within Kanak culture, the organisation of research programs, and the promotion of cultural exchange, particularly within the South Pacific region (Centre Culturel Tjibaou 2003). Its aim is also to offer Kanak heritage as a cultural inheritance of the whole Caledonian population, in order to provide cultural references on which artistic creation may be founded (Del Rio 1998, 35). Its goal is to present a culture that all Kanaks may recognise as theirs and which is also recognised as such from the outside (Neaoutyine 2000).

Figure 3.2. Centre Culturel Tjibaou

Photograph: David Becker. © Centre Culturel Tjibaou – ADCK/Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Architectes.

All these objectives are being implemented by the considerable staff numbers dispersed through the various departments of the CCT.5 As a reminder and a starting point for all activities, the CCT first presents a few historical Kanak artefacts on temporary loan from French museums. Throughout the year, the Performance and Events Department promotes and encourages training and presents traditional and contemporary performing arts of New Caledonia, the Pacific and the rest of the world. The Library is a specialised resource centre focused on Kanak and Oceanian cultures. The Department for Cultural Development, Heritage and Research publishes the Mwà Véé Kanak cultural magazine and funds research programs, cultural radio and Kanak language broadcasts. The Public Development Department communicates and organises activities and workshops, especially involving young people. Additionally, the Visual Arts and Exhibitions Department fosters worldwide artists’ workshops focused on the creation of manual arts using contemporary means that are linked to a solid base of heritage and regional consciousness (Centre Culturel Tjibaou 2003). Through the permanent exhibition of its collection of contemporary Kanak and Oceanian art and the organisation of temporary exhibitions of contemporary art, the CCT also tries to associate Caledonian and Kanak contemporary art with art production in the Pacific region to promote the broader international interest in and recognition of Pacific art (Del Rio 2004, 33).6

The CCT probably presents the best organised, professional heritage institution in New Caledonia to the outside world. Contemporary art supported by the centre seems a powerful and meaningful compromise between tradition and modernity. Paradoxically, the creation of an authentic image of Kanak culture to serve as a reference to other cultures endangers Kanak cultural diversity and some denounce the CCT vision as a misrepresentation of ‘The Culture’ (Neaoutyine 2000). This is perhaps where the significance of an ethnographic museum such as the MNC lies, standing as it does across from a modern cultural centre such as the CCT. Here the MNC can serve as a reference for tradition and as the foundation for expressions of cultural diversity, balancing tradition and modernity.

ENDNOTES

1     Recent exhibits were Pacific Tapa, Exchange Currencies, Melanesian Bows and Arrows, and Jewellery and Adornment of Melanesia.

2     Fourteen people are employed, with cleaning, security and mount-making staff making up more than half.

3     The funding comes as part of the Oudinot Accords, which complement the Matignon Accords signed by the French government and the two major political parties of New Caledonia on 20 August 1988.

4     The festival was organised by Jean-Marie Tjibaou in 1975 to emphasise Kanak culture and cultural revival (see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Marie_Tjibaou). The buildings bear names such as Kanaké, Jinu (the spirit), Bwénaado (the customary gathering), Kavitara (the entrance of the hut) or Mvmko (little house).

5     There are almost 70 people employed there, according to Emmanuel Kasarhérou who has been the cultural director of the centre since its opening (personal communication, 2 May 2006).

6     The collection of contemporary Kanak and Oceanian art comprises approximately 700 paintings, sculptures, installations and works of art on paper.

REFERENCES

Centre Culturel Tjibaou. 2003. ‘Presentation of the project’. [Internet]. Agency for the Development of Kanak Culture. Accessed 10 May 2006. Available from: http://www.adck.nc/en.

Del Rio, G. 1998. ‘A Prefiguration Inscribed in Reality’ (Une préfiguration inscrite dans la réalité). Mwà Véé 19 (January–March): 34–38.

Del Rio, G. 2004. ‘Contemporary Art at the Tjibaou Cultural Centre’ (L’art contemporain au Centre Culturel Tjibaou). Mwà Véé 45 (July–September): 32–43.

Kasarhérou, E. 1996. ‘Extension project of the Territorial Museum’ (Projet d’aménagement et d’extension du Musée Territorial). Unpublished report. Services des Musées et du Patrimoine.

Kasarhérou, E. 2003. ‘Museums and indigenous people in the Pacific’ (Musées et populations autochtones en Océanie). Proceedings of Indigenous Networks, Partnership, Ethical Issues: The International Conference. 20–21 March; Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle de Lyon, France: 59–65.

Neaoutyine, M. S. 2000. ‘New Caledonia Searching for a National Identity’ (Nouvelle-Calédonie en quête d’une identité nationale). Akoz 7.

 

Cite this chapter as: Tissandier, Marianne. 2006. ‘Museums of New Caledonia: The old, the new and the balance of the two’. South Pacific Museums, edited by Healy, Chris; Witcomb, Andrea. Monash University ePress: Melbourne. pp. 3.1–3.5.

© Copyright 2006 Marianne Tissandier
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