Melanesia: Art and Encounter

Melanesia is one of the most culturally diverse and artistically fertile regions of the world. This book is an exploration of one of the richest collections of Melanesian art, that of the British Museum. It is the product of sustained dialogue with people from Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, West Papua, and New Caledonia, who are authors or co-authors of many of its chapters. Melanesia: Art and Encounter, edited by Lissant Bolton, Nicholas Thomas, Elizabeth Bonshek, Julie Adams, and Ben Burt, is a companion to this outstanding collection.

“Melanesia: Art and Encounter charts the terms of engagement between Melanesians and their material traces in a major Western museum. The contributors harness the power of a remarkable collection of artefacts to unsettle and recreate cultural memory and to highlight cross-cultural connections between persons and things. Beautifully illustrated and carefully researched, this volume brilliantly demonstrates the Melanesian axiom that objects and images realise, animate, and sometimes disrupt relationships.” —Robert Foster, University of Rochester

July 2013
ISBN 978-0-8248-3853-9 / $120.00 (CLOTH)