Paper short abstract:

Cambridge graduate H. D. Skinner oversaw the redisplay of the Otago Museum’s Maori Hall on the basis of his theory of culture areas in New Zealand. In its 1922 Annual Report the Museum - visited in considerable numbers - claimed this new exhibition method would prove a fruitful field of study.

Paper long abstract:

Three years after he was appointed Assistant Curator at the Otago University Museum in New Zealand, Henry Devenish Skinner completely rearranged the artefacts on display in the Museum's Maori Hall.

Skinner had published 'Culture Areas in New Zealand' in the Journal of the Polynesian Society in 1921. The paper had revealed significant regional variation in Maori culture which Skinner felt had a bearing on the question of the settlement of New Zealand, since he believed the different areas reflected the cultures of different ethnic waves. It also formed the basis for the Museum's new-look Maori display.

The 1922 Annual Report claimed: 'practically the whole Maori collection is now arranged on a locality basis, a method never before adopted in New Zealand' and concluded the 'study of these differences in material culture...will prove a fruitful field of study in the future'.

Earlier exhibits had not lacked didactic purpose. In the previous decade there are descriptions of a case of bone implements, labelled and arranged in illustration of the manufacture of fish-hooks, and details of a rock art display believed to illustrate the art of the early inhabitants of the South Island. The institution was even then an important part of Dunedin's social and educational life, the curator commenting 'it is gratifying to find so much interest taken by one's fellow citizens in the Museum'.

Now, the 1922 gallery looks brown-linoleum-and-table-cases old-fashioned. But then it embodied an exciting new concept used to show the Otago public a scientific view of Maori culture.