Post #597841 by bigbrotiki on Sat, Jul 16, 2011 5:14 AM

In every new location I go to I am looking forward to visiting the Ethnology Museum. I love old-fashioned Ethnology and Natural History Museums, after all they inspired many of the concepts of Tiki Lounges.

The Dresden one is in the Japanese Palais:

To my disappointment, it only mounts temporary exhibitions, and has no permanent collection on display. So this time, none of the exhibits were about any of the Oceanic cultures. But to the culturally curious there is always something to discover:

One thing I really liked was the that courtyard had these Asian support post figures that reminded me of the Genie on the Zombie Village menu. The kind of fairy tale book illustration Asian that quickly became politically incorrect in the 2nd half of the 20th Century

They still stand as a reminder of a romantic fascination with exotic cultures...

...and of an ornamental architecture that quickly became extinct with modernism - except for Tiki! :)

One of the current exhibits was on Amazonian Indian tribes, and showed some interesting examples of body modification then and now...

...and the use of blow guns:

...giving the term "blow" for Cocaine a very literal meaning!

Most interesting were the use of bark cloth and basketry for Duk Duk-like costumes:

...displayed here in front of an A-frame hut:

Then there were other paralels to Oceanic cultures, like head trophies:

Among them, most famously, the shrunken heads:

Here with the first SLOTH shrunken head I had ever seen!
Then there was an exhibit on exotic landscape wall papers, forerunners to Poly pop bar murals:

The most rewarding find were several Museum publications on Oceanic art (x-ept the French one):

...of which this one was right up my A-frame alley! :) :

A 661 pages thick tome an the cult houses of New Guinea with a slew of never before seen photos and diagrams, of which I can only share a few here:

A museum visit well worth it!