Oceania
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of 2,407 objects from Oceania. These date from 1780 to 2004. This collection includes carved-wooden, stone and bone figures and totems. It also contains furniture, architectural elements, weapons, domestic implements, ritual apparatus, objects associated with water transport, hunting and fishing equipment, and tools. In addition, there are body ornaments, tattooing implements, amulets, ceremonial art, contemporary art, musical instruments, masks, armour, barkcloth and costume. The collection has a significant number of unique or extremely rare items of historical interest, such as a ‘witchdoctor’s purse’ made of spider web from Vanuatu and the earliest Maori free-standing ancestral figure, one of only six acknowledged to exist. It also holds 19th century material from the Torres Straits that forms a particularly outstanding and coherent group of international importance. Further significant items include sacred ceremonial artefacts from the Balgu, Gnallam, Ingibandi and Maritunia people of North West Australia that are exceptional for their comprehensive provenance. The collection boasts fine examples of contemporary indigenous art, including works by Chimbu artist Mathias Kauage OBE, Paddy Japaljarri Sims, Dawidi, Lindsay Bird Mpetyane, June Bird-Petyarre and Pansy Napangati. The continent of Oceania comprises the Australian mainland and islands, and a vast archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, including New Zealand, Micronesia and Polynesia.
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