Bøger af Carol E. Mayer

Sea of Islands brings together knowledge holders, scholars, and artists from across the Pacific with Western scholars working with Pacific collections—as well as members of diasporic Oceanic communities—to share the stories and journeys of the objects that comprise Canada’s largest Oceanic collection, housed at The Museum of Anthropology at UBC.In 1927 a stunning collection of 1,500 items—from canoes and barkcloths, to paintings and musical instruments, to tools and masks—was donated by adventurer and writer Dr. Frank Burnett to the University of British Columbia. This donation would be the founding collection of the University’s Museum of Anthropology, which has since grown to become Canada’s largest and most diverse Oceanic collection.Today, museums acknowledge they live with a legacy of a different time that situates their collections in a difficult and contested past. Author Carol E. Mayer’s text draws on her decades of research and outreach centered around the complex intersections between museum collections, contemporary art practices and different knowledge systems. The result is an exploration of MOA’s Oceanic collection’s objects—old and new—alongside stories and journeys of those objects as shared by knowledge holders, scholars, and artists from across the Pacific. The text considers how these items continue to articulate systems of meaning and engender new relationships, and is illustrated with stunning photographs of the collection, and field photographs from Oceanic communities.

Like the ceramics he collected throughout his life, Walter C. Koerner was a survivor of turbulent times. Born in Moravia in 1889, Koerner fled his homeland shortly before the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. After immigrating to Canada and settling in B.C., he prospered in business and became one of the University of British Columbia’s most significant benefactors.Today, the gallery in the Museum of Anthropology that bears Koerner’s name is home to one of the most exquisite collections of European ceramics in North America. The Koerner Ceramics Gallery is a testament to elegance, craftsmanship, and the beauty of everyday objects. Yet it is also a reflection of the complex socio-political forces at work throughout four centuries of European history.A lavish celebration of this impressive collection, Koerner Ceramics highlights approximately two hundred functional and decorative wares from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. From Italian Renaissance maiolica, still considered by many to be the pinnacle of European ceramic art; to Haban pottery created by Anabaptist craftsmen, which carries the history of religious faith and persecution; to delftware from Holland, which was inspired by the Chinese and Japanese porcelain that arrived on Dutch shores in the seventeenth century—the pieces featured in this volume document the evolution of style, technique, and culture. This book is a fascinating, comprehensive, and visually stunning tribute.