Sacred Treasures of the Maoris

A rare exhibit of primitive carvings comes to the U.S.

It was the most unusual opening in the 114-year history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The ceremony began at the unaccustomed hour of 6:32 a.m. on the vast expanse of steps fronting New York City's most venerable art institution. There, five Maori women lifted their voices in unison with the rising sun and intoned the karanga, a ritual call of welcome. Instantly, a booming responsive chant was heard to echo from a block up Fifth Avenue, where a group of Maori tribesmen had forgathered. Then up the steps they came: 90 Maori dignitaries, some I with albatross feathers in their hair and tasseled white cloaks draped over their business suits. Leading the procession were two nearly naked warriors who stuck out their tongues and brandished their spears at evil spirits.

When the visitors from New Zealand reached the museum entrance, they touched noses, Maori-style, with their waiting American hosts. These included J. Richardson Dilworth, the Metropolitan's chairman, and officials of the American Federation of Arts, which organized the exhibit of Maori sculpture, and the Mobil Corp.. which helped pay for it. The ceremony ended with a tour of the show by tribesmen, who paused and prayed before each major piece of sculpture and offered incantations.

The ritual was not a photo opportunity staged for the occasion. It was required, said Maori leaders, to lift the tapu, or religious restrictions, from the exhibit's 174 pieces, which the New Zealanders believe are imbued with the living spirits of their ancestors. After the Metropolitan show closes Jan. 6, Maori leaders will travel abroad once more to conduct tapu-lifting rites when the exhibit opens at the St. Louis Art Museum in February and the M.H, de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in July.

Until the Metropolitan's epochal show, the religious art could be viewed only in widely scattered New Zealand museums that hold individual pieces in trust for their Maori owners. The decade-long effort by the museum's chairman of primitive art, Douglas Newton, to bring the work to the U.S. was conspicuously worthwhile. For Americans, a walk through the Metropolitan's exhibit is a voyage of discovery, as astonishing as the sight of Maori art must have been in 1769, when Captain James Cook's Endeavour first touched New Zealand's shore. When the ship's artist, Sydney Parkinson, went inland, he marveled at the Maoris' "particular taste for carving."

As Parkinson noted, the means used to carve were primitive, but the effect was wondrously sophisticated. What he failed to divine was the reason: carving has been regarded as a sacred occupation since A.D. 900, when the Maoris first sailed in their canoes from other Polynesian islands to the place they called "the land of the long white cloud." To create the taonga whakairo, or decorated treasures prized by the Maoris, a sculptor was expected to combine artistic skill with such qualities as leadership, courage, religious learning and generosity. So revered was the artist that he worked surrounded by student acolytes and apprentices, while women, who were regarded as inferior beings, were prohibited from watching him in the act of creation.

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