Post #264601 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Nov 5, 2006 12:58 PM

Sign me up for the board, Dawn, my hole love for Tiki has its roots in early school outings to the Hamburg Museum of Anthropology. Museums have inspired Picasso and the moderns to create their art. Wherever I stay I seek out the local Natural History Museums. I think every good Tiki Bar, and also the Book of Tiki, are a bit like a museum.

The question of ethics is a good one. Does Tiki still insult indigenous people and their culture? I firmly believe not, if coming from the intention of adoration for the culture. Since it is a dead culture for the most part, ANY translation of it into modern day increases its mana, in my opinion. Often, a country's dead traditions have been taken up by people of OTHER nations, and even if not in the purist sense, have thus been injected with new life. For every ten Tiki fans that just want to get smashed on Mai Tais there is one that genuinely falls in love with the original culture, beyond its pop manifestation. That's one more than before. The key point is to explain that the one does not exclude the other, one person can enjoy both. Or just one, that's OK too, traditionalists and populists do not have to be at odds with each other.

A Tiki/ Poly Pop museum would have a much cleaner conscience as to the artifacts of of midcentury Tiki than the real museums. Granted, the Maori meeting house in the Hamburg Museum was legally sold to it because of its bad luck curse, and it was officially dedicated by a Maori delegation decades after. But a large part of the museum's South Seas Arts stock is based on an official expedition at the turn of the century that travelled the then German colonies of Melanesia and brought back some 50 000 (!) authentic artifacts (though some just fishhooks). Though the argument of this and many other museums is that these indigenous pieces would have been abandoned and left to rot, and now have been preserved, the impact of this type of scientific looting on the decline of native cultures has never been measured.
It is a difficult problem to assess, I myself have seen a giant stone Tiki head in the Marquesan jungle whose features had been almost completely washed a way by the elements, while its twin counterpart in the Berlin Museum has retained its original sculptural quality.

But Polynesian Pop is free of this conflict of tainted acquisition (IF the pieces have not been removed from still active Tiki establishments, of course), because it proudly continues in Picasso's belief that the authenticity is not as important as the piece being done in the correct SPIRIT.

As for the location, I would propose Los Angeles, I believe Oceanic Arts' collection would be a good foundation for a Tiki Museum. Or how about Hawaii, I am aiming to retire there. :)

I further would like to nominate Sabu, Mimi, BK, Humu, Swanky, the Beachbum, Otto, James T., Duke Carter, and some other of the fine Tiki archaeologists on this forum, all for their vast general knowledge but also for their various areas of expertise, as members of the board.