Xanadu Gallery -- more PNG art on the San Francisco Peninsula

This weekend, Hanford and I went for a stroll along the downtown area of Menlo Park, which is just on the other side of Stanford University from us. (We hadn't explored Menlo Park before -- it's pretty cool! There's a neat old midcentury coffee shop we want to check out. But I digress...)

There was a big gallery/antiques place called Xanadu Gallery that had some beatiful old Chinese pieces in the window... we almost passed it by, but Hanford peered in a bit further than I did -- and spied a PNG mask on the wall toward the back!

The place had a whole bunch of PNG stuff. An overwhelming amount. Also a few Tahitian and Marquesan pieces, but mostly Papua New Guinea items. About 1/2 - 1/3 of it was for sale, the rest were part of a private collection and were for display only. There were tikis, masks, war clubs, drums -- even a couple of canoes.

I asked the manager of the gallery if there was any connection with the art here and the Papua New Guinea collection on display at the nearby Palo Alto Trader Vic's, and she confirmed my suspicions -- this gallery is owned by Mr. Hanley (I keep forgetting his first name), who is also part-owner of the Palo Alto Trader Vic's. There is no connection, though, with the Papua New Guinea sculpture garden on the Stanford Campus, though -- that's just a coincidence. The manager, Lija (or Ellie, for short), was very friendly and helpful, and let me take lots of pictures. Lija told me that Xanadu has another, larger location up in the city (in a Frank Lloyd Wright building), that has much older Oceanic art pieces.

So there are three different places to see beautiful Papua New Guinea art within just a couple miles: Xanadu Gallery, the garden at Stanford, and the Palo Alto Trader Vic's. What are the odds?

Here's the whole album of photos:
http://photo.humuhumu.com/v/pnginmenlopark/

Here are just a few of the pictures I took:

Check out this sign from the parking lot, complete with very helpful diagram:

So that's what I've been doing wrong!

DIG!!

Cool. We lived in Menlo Park for 2 years back in the Eighties, but I don't recall seeing this gallery back then.

this gallery is owned by Mr. Hanley (I keep forgetting his first name), who is also part-owner of the Palo Alto Trader Vic's.

I'm sure there are plenty of Hanley's on the peninsula, but I have to ask - was it Pat or Dan Hanley? Locals might know of that family from Duca & Hanley meats, or Duca & Hanley properties.

-Randy

Humu,
Super cool pics, I feel inspired. thanks for the share. Dawn

Fabulous pictures as always....kudos Humu. Hmmmm, that long canoe would look great hanging in my lounge....highly suspect that would empty my account. It all looks so beautifully displayed and the faces on the masks almost call out "take me home" just like a pound puppy. :D

Apparently this PNG-loving Hanley is a "real estate magnate"; being new to the area, I'm not familiar with Duca & Hanley meats or properties, but this could very well be the same fella.

I visited their other gallery in 2000 and again in 2002.
The Frank Lloyd Wright building that it is in, is amazing.
It is in the same neighborhood as a lot of other art galleries, all worth checking out.

At the time I visited, the manager didn't have a lot of Oceanic art on display, but said that they had more in their basement storage room, and actualy took me down there to check it out.

It was like opening Tut's tomb... there was tons and tons of stuff in this dim basement.

They had a really nice yipwan in there for $5000, and I almost bought it.

In 2003, I visited a certain private dealer of PNG stuff in the midwest and got an identical piece for $200.

PNG stuff is becoming rather common.
Turns out that the locals on PNG have no problem selling their artifacts off - if you have the resources, you can (apparently) fill up a shipping container with a few hundred artifacts, and haul it all over to the US of A, where you can make a profit selling 'em for $200... or mark 'em up plenty and rake it in at $5k.

But I digress.

When on the opposite coast, in Manhattan, SoHo to be more specific, visit Lecan Designs, 93 Mercer at Spring. A lot of Tribal artifacts, tons of Chinese and Asian, some Indian, craploads of beads, and plenty of the same sort of New Guinea stuff that Xanadu and our pal in the midwest have.

In PNG, they use an item once and will often literally throw it in a ditch. Every time they build a new men's haus, they make everythgin new. So they end up with lots of stuff lying around.

Makes me not so sad about the condition mine is in! Same village. Only the Korogo make them this big. They put a skirt on him though. Quaint!

Thanks for the pictures! I spend a lot of time online looking for different PNG galleries and reference material for my carvings. This was a treat. I also looked through the album you posted and there are lot of great shots!

JP

[ Edited by: filslash 2008-09-20 15:19 ]

You know, one of the largest collections of PNG art is at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco.

http://www.thinker.org/deyoung/collections/collection.asp?collectionkey=39&screen=1