Oceania

Oceania encompasses about 25,000 islands clustered in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The collection features 300 art objects from diverse cultures in these regions.  An additional 150 Indonesian textiles are part of the Cantor Arts Center's holdings. Highlights of the collection, on display in the gallery, include a pair of friezes from a Batak granary (sopo), elaborately carved Batak staffs, and an ancestral commemorative horse and rider figure (jara heda) from Flores. Other cultures represented by sculpture include the Dayak of West Kalimantan, the Toraja of Sulawesi, and the island of Nias. Islands of Southeast Asia include the Philippines, with a representative figure from the Ifugao people of the northern highlands of Luzon.

A section of the gallery is devoted to the diverse cultures of the South Pacific, with representative arts from the Melanesian island nations of Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and New Caledonia, as well as the Polynesian cultures of the Maori, Easter Island, and Hawaii. The collection includes a few works in shell from Micronesia.

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See selections from the Cantor's collection in the Google Art Project.



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