Oceanic Art Speaks - Robert J Foster

In this presentation Robert J. Foster of the University of Rochester and Western Sydney University responds to recent calls in art history and museum studies to broaden the concept of provenance (e.g., Higonett 2012; Jones and Forbes 2025).

See Robert deliver his recent paper from the Pacific Arts Association International Symposium.

He will outline three phases of provenance research, the last of which moves in the direction of anthropological accounts of "the social life of things" (Appadurai 1986).

Robert identifies the challenges and opportunities of this development through a case study of the sale of "primitive art from New Guinea" in US department stores during the 1960s. These exhibition sales, organized by St. Louis art collector Morton D. May and facilitated by prominent New York dealer Julius Carlebach, offered middle-class American shoppers an opportunity to acquire original objects of art at affordable prices.

These sales also stimulated the growth of a post-WW2 art market in New Guinea, especially in economically marginal areas.

This case study focuses on the social life of one carving that travelled from the Sepik region to its current resting place at the Buffalo Museum of Science.

Don't miss this live presentation. It is not being recorded.