The soul of Oceania

SAN DIEGO — "Just look at the noses," says Los Angeles collector Valerie Franklin, approaching a display of Melanesian masks at the San Diego Museum of Art. One resembles a sharply pointed beak, another curls into a spiral, yet another sprouts a branch that morphs into a bird-like form. A 19th century mask with a strikingly modern look has a relatively ordinary proboscis, but it anchors a twisted face with a haunting expression.

Noses are not the point of "Oceanic Art: A Celebration of Form," an exhibition of about 100 objects from Franklin's collection and the holdings of Edward and Mina Smith, who live near San Diego. But fascination with details is a pathway to understanding a swath of cultural history that can be baffling for novices.

"The imagination that's manifest in the art brings the creative impulse to life," Franklin says. "There is an immediacy about the material that makes it very exciting visually. You could come back to the exhibition 50 times and see something different each time."

Fifty return trips may be a bit much, but many more people are looking at Oceanic art these days. And not only at ethnographic repositories, as in the past, but in mainstream art museums. What's more, Pacific Island art is about to get a showcase of its own in Long Beach.

In San Diego, "Oceanic Art" is paired with "Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body," a traveling show, as part of an effort to expand the Balboa Park museum's global reach and attract a broader audience. "Black Womanhood" will end April 26; the Oceanic show will remain until Jan. 3 with a few changes from time to time.

The museum's first exhibition on the subject in 40 years, it's a welcoming gesture to Southern California's large population of South Pacific Island people, says Executive Director Derrick R. Cartwright. But it's also a timely event that taps into "burgeoning curiosity about the works of art that come out of [the region's] inherently fragile, insular ecosystems," he says.

Though far from a comprehensive survey, the show offers considerable insight into the art of Oceania -- the collective term for about 25,000 Pacific islands that are home to 1,800 cultures and hundreds of artistic traditions. Works on view include figurative sculpture, bark cloth, jewelry, baskets, ceramic containers, musical instruments, canoe ornaments, shields and weapons. Mostly made between the late 18th and early 20th centuries, they are the work of anonymous artists.