Opening
Thursday, May 22, 2025
6 to 9 pm

Artist talks in the gallery:
Andrea Carlson and Tanya Lukin Linklater
Friday, May 23, 2025, starting at 3:30 pm

Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Stanley Inum, Fordy Inum, and Enoch Lun with translator Kireni Imwe Jean Sparks-Ngenge
Saturday, May 24, 2025, starting at 2 pm

RSVP by clicking here.

May 23 to August 2, 2025

From the Visible Vault 2: Papua New Guinea Cultural Belongings

Visible Vault study centre

The occasion of Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s exhibition When Water Embraces Empty Space is the impetus for our second From the Visible Vault exhibition. We present a selection of delicate and finely crafted cultural belongings from Papua New Guinea in our Visible Vault. Nguyễn’s exhibition began with the Luf Boat, a massive and elaborately carved outrigger sailing vessel from the island of Luf, Papua New Guinea, made in the late 1800s. The canoe was confiscated by the Hernsheim trading company and sold to the German ethnographic museum in 1904. A main aspect of Nguyễn’s exhibition is reuniting descendants of the people of Luf with the canoe while questioning the colonial history of theft and violence that brought it to its current site at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.

York University’s art collection holds 49 artworks and cultural belongings from Papua New Guinea, which were donated to the University in the late 1970s by architectural historian Thomas Howarth (1914–2000), a University of Toronto professor whose research focused on Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. From documents pulled by Jennifer Grant from York University’s Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, we learn that Howarth had a long relation with York University, consulting as an architectural site planner, and that these objects were brought into the collection as a significant gift by then-gallery curator Michael Greenwood with the notion of the objects being a “valuable teaching asset” and with a stated intent of it being publicly exhibited in whole or in part. Having just achieved museum Category A status, the gallery could issue charitable receipts for cultural property donations, making it desirable for collectors to donate works. The gift by Howarth was marked as a first and celebrated with an exhibition and lecture curated by the collector himself in 1978. Since then, these refined and sensitive cultural objects have only been exhibited once to the public, in a 2014 general collections exhibition Biding Time curated by Philip Monk.

Nguyễn’s exhibition brings renewed urgency to understanding the histories embedded in these cultural belongings, compelling us to research their provenance. Inspired by the artist’s critical engagement with colonial displacement and cultural loss, we have begun investigating how these works came into Howarth’s possession and their subsequent journey to the University. As part of this process, we have reached out to Carol E. Mayers, author of the publication Sea of Islands: Exploring Objects, Stories, and Memories from Oceania, and Mitiana Arbon, Pacific Curator at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, to gain deeper insights into these object’s origins and significance. Their expertise is helping us trace the histories of these objects, the networks through which they circulated, and the broader ethical considerations of holding them in a university collection. They have also introduced us to Digital Pasifik, which focuses on the digital preservation and sharing of Pacific cultural heritage where we will share the belongings with Pacific Islander communities. As part of this introduction, we are hosting Stanley Inum, Fordy Stanley, Enoch Lun, and Kireni Imwe Jean Sparks-Ngenge who are from Papua New Guinea. They are Nguyễn’s collaborators, descendants of Luf and central to his exhibition. We hope to gain their knowledge of the belongings we have in our care while also introducing them to Indigenous artists working in stone with studios near Toronto. In Vancouver, Arbon will host them, touring them through MOA’s collection and scheduling visits with Indigenous artists specializing in wood carving.

Can an artist have impact on how an institution or art collection sees itself? In a recent catalogue on Nguyễn’s work, the director of the Joan Miró Collection points to Nguyễn’s ability to “affect the semantic field of an entire collection and museum project.”  (1) And it is the same here, Nguyễn’s project and research as a whole has fostered a deeper conversation about the responsibilities of cultural stewardship and the role we can play in ensuring these objects came to us ethically and, if not, begin a process of repatriation.

1↺ Martina Milla, “Are Wars Ever Over?” in Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn: Our Ghosts Live in the Future (Fundació Joan Miró; Stavros Niarchos Foundation, 2023), 29.