Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses by Philipp Schorch (review)

Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses explores Indigenous museum practices at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Hawai'i, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert in Rapa Nui. The writers include Philipp Schorch, professor of museum anthropology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany; Noelle M K Y Kahanu, assistant specialist in American studies at the University of Hawai'i–Mānoa; Sean Mallon, curator at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; Cristián Moreno Pakarati, Rapanui historian and founding member of the research and educational organization Rapanui Pioneers Society; Mara Mulrooney, senior project supervisor at Pacific Legacy, Inc; Nina Tonga, curator of contemporary art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; and Ty P Kāwika Tengan, associate professor of ethnic studies and anthropology at the University of Hawai'i–Mānoa. Together, these curators and scholars present an exciting alternative lens through which to view ethnographic museums and their collections (1, 15–17).

The book engages a uniquely cooperative structure, with three parts divided into two chapters each, the first of which is a collaboration between Schorch and one or more of the other authors and the second of which offers Schorch's additional analysis and reflection. The inclusion of Indigenous voices makes this work distinctive, providing views and analyses of museological representations that situate objects as "pastbecoming-present-becoming-future" (44). This makes the work ideal for those studying histories of museum display, art histories, visual studies, Oceanic material culture, anthropology, ontologies, and decolonization of museum representation.

Part I, "Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Hawai'i," describes the historical Native Hawaiian presence in the Bishop Museum and shows that the argument for decolonizing museological representation is not new. In chapter 1, Schorch uses a photograph from the Bishop Museum archives to demonstrate how Indigenous people are aware of and comfortable with inhabiting several spaces that are considered "in-between" by Homi Bhabha, while Kahanu describes her past experience as an employee of the Bishop Museum, where regular collaboration with Native Hawaiians was an important element for exhibitions. Currently, this kind of collaboration is less common, but Native Hawaiian representation persists. In chapter 2, Schorch reflects on his fieldwork, addressing how Native Hawaiians conceptualize the past as a consistent transformation that orients the present-day speaker toward the emergent future. He argues the importance of "rethink[ing museum] temporalities through Hawaiian lenses" as a dialogical practice (44), thereby reimagining the Bishop Museum as a transforming and living genealogical space. In this vein, as Marques Hanalei Maran explained, art "will never have the same mana because every person is different." Thus, there is a need to "'understand the intention and the reasons why those things are being made' so 'you can create new things with the same ideology and concept which will look completely different but will be telling the same story'" (Maran quoted in Schorch and others, 55). In other words, Indigenous pieces in the museum inspire reconnection with the times when their respective material cultures were actively practiced—a materialized conversation with both ancestors and present-day Native Hawaiians that represents the past-becoming-present-becomingfuture (60).

In part II, "Museo Anthropológico Padre Sebastián Englert, Rapa Nui," the first chapter includes essays by Pakarati and Mulrooney on the Métraux Photography Project, a collaboration between the Bishop Museum and the Museo Anthropológico Padre Sebastián Englert that aimed to reconnect and reengage the museum collections with the Rapanui community. In this project, the conversations with Rapanui about historical photographs at the two museums provided a space for the Rapanui to reclaim their past...