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- Position title:
- Curator, Pacific
- Section:
- Human History
- Email:
- Contact Fuli
About Fuli
As the Curator Pacific, I am charged with caring for, providing access to and carrying out research on the Pacific collection at Auckland Museum. The collections are among the most significant collections internationally. It contains an incredibly diverse range of taonga from over 600 barkcloth pieces to full-size vaka (canoes) and represents a number of collectors including Edge Partington and the Melanesian Mission. In addition to the Pacific Collection, I have a watching brief over the World Ethnology collections, which include upwards of 7,000 items from mainland China, Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas, Canada and Australia.
Research interests and projects
My research and writing was initially focused on contemporary Pacific arts as created in New Zealand. Currently I head the Pacific Collection Access Project, which in collaboration with our local Polynesian communities, will enhance the data record of at least 5000 Polynesian treasures over three years. My current work centres on the social and cultural aspects of material culture, more specifically around adornment, dress and the historical collections within the wider Pacific collections. Alongside this, the Collection Manager for Applied Arts and Design and I are re-cataloguing a collection of just over 200 American First Nations collection items that formed part of an exchange in 1887 between Auckland Museum and the United States National Museum, now the National Museum of Natural History.
Selected research publications
2012 ‘Arts Specific: Pacific People and New Zealand’s Arts’. In Tangata O Le Moana: New Zealand and the People of the Pacific. Te Papa Press.
2004 Pacific Jewellery and Adornment. David Bateman Ltd. Auckland. Neich, R and F Pereira.
2003 ‘Vahine: The Negotiation of Context’. In Art New Zealand 107 (November): 52-55, 95.
2002 Pacific Art Niu Sila : Pacific Dimensions Of Contemporary New Zealand Art. S Mallon and F Pereira (eds). Te Papa Press, Wellington.
1997 Speaking in Colour. Conversations with artists of Pacific Island Heritage. S Mallon and P F Pereira. Te Papa Press, Wellington.