The British Museum loaned the most famous Oceanian sculpture in the world to the main museum in Tahiti for three years. Known as A’a, the sculpture depicts a deified ancestor of the people of Rurutu, a small island nearly 600 km south of Tahiti.
Te Fare Iamanaha/Museum of Tahiti and the Islands (Museum of Tahiti and the Islands) reopened in March after a major expansion. French architect Pierre-Jean Picart has designed a large showroom, where A’a is the key element on display. The museum is located in Punaauia, 10 km from the capital Papeete in French Polynesia.
A’a, carved from sandalwood, stands 1.2m tall. It is a stylized human sculpture, but what is most unusual are the 30 small figurines that emerge from its surface. At the bottom is a cavity that probably once served as a reliquary, containing a human skull.
Until recently, A’a was believed to date from the 18th century, but latest research shows that the wood dates from 1591-1647, making it one of the earliest surviving Polynesian carvings. The origin of the name A’a, first used by British missionary John Williams in 1821, remains obscure.
It was in 1821 that some of the chiefs of Rurutu converted to Christianity and to show their allegiance they sent a boat with A’a and other traditional religious objects to the island of Ra’iatea, where the London Missionary Society had a base. At that time, Rurutu had only a few hundred inhabitants, its population having been decimated by the introduction of European diseases.
Williams described the boat’s arrival as laden with “trophies of victory, the gods of the heathen caught in this bloodless war [for Christianity]”.
Two centuries later, it is virtually impossible to determine the precise circumstances under which A’a was renounced or even to whom this property belonged. As it was apparently voluntarily removed from Rurutu by a small group of islanders, it was not directly plundered by Europeans.
The London Missionary Society took A’a from Ra’iatea to England, where it was displayed in their museum in London. In 1890 the company loaned A’a to the British Museum and in 1911 ownership was transferred.
Unfortunately, the British Museum has for decades lacked a gallery from Oceania, so it has no suitable place to display this key sculpture in a proper context. A’a has therefore been loaned to outdoor exhibitions, such as that of the Royal Academy of Arts’ 2018 Oceania to show.
Henry Moore with a cast of A’a, given to him on his 80th birthday by the British Museum Photo: Errol Jackson. Reproduced with permission from the Henry Moore Foundation
A’a has long been a great source of inspiration for European artists. Picasso saw a cast of the sculpture in the home of English surrealist artist and collector, Roland Penrose, during a visit to Sussex in 1950 – and he soon commissioned a copy for his studio. Henry Moore had admired A’a as early as the 1920s, and in 1978 the British Museum presented him with a cast for his 80th birthday. He remains visible in Hoglands, his former home in Hertfordshire.
In addition to A’a, the British Museum lends five other pieces to Te Fare Iamanaha/Musée de Tahiti et des Iles. The musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris and the museum of archeology and anthropology in Cambridge also lend.
A’a will not return to Rurutu, as the remote island of 2,400 people lacks the facilities of the Museum of Tahiti. But another casting is at the town hall of Rurutu.
Steven Hooper, a specialist in Pacific art at the Sainsbury Center at the University of East Anglia, describes A’a as “one of mankind’s greatest artistic creations, as something of great rarity, of wonder and curiosity – in the positive 18th century sense of that word”.
