We caught up with Professor Steven Hooper to talk about a recent exhibition at the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain from October 15, 2016 to February, 12, 2017. Prof Hooper is a professor of visual arts and director of the research unit. He led the exhibition “Fiji — Art & Life in the Pacific” at the university which holds one of the largest collections of Fijian artefacts numbering about 280. The artefacts were loaned from the Fiji Museum, the British Museum and museums in Cambridge, Oxford, Aberdeen. The exhibition made headlines around the world when Queen Elizabeth II visited it in January. As the curator of the large exhibition, Prof Hooper talks about the inspiration behind his love for the Pacific Island’s traditional artefacts.
TIMES: Professor Hooper, I understand you became passionate about the arts of the Pacific region as a result of growing up surrounded by it at your grandfather’s private musuem. Tell us a little bit about this and how it has influenced your career as a curator?
HOOPER: My grandfather James Hooper worked until he was 60 for the Thames River Authority in the London area, but since he was a boy, before World War I (1914-18), he was fascinated by far-away places, especially the Pacific Islands. So as a childhood hobby he began to collect things that he could find in markets and antique shops, first with his pocket money and then with money from his job. He could find many things from the Pacific in Britain, because of Britain’s naval expeditions around the world since the 18th century and also because of the work of missionaries, travellers and colonial officers, all of whom collected souvenirs, received gifts or collected things for scientific reasons.
My grandfather gradually assembled a private museum which filled his house, and he retired when he was 60 and in 1957 opened his museum to the public called the Totems Museum in the town of Arundel in Sussex in the south of England. By this time, he had about 2000 objects in his museum, not only from the Pacific Islands, but also from Africa and North America — Native American things. He had all sorts of things, sculptures, bowls, ornaments, weapons, tools, textiles, clothing. He had about 150 things from Fiji of all types, many of which were given to Fiji Museum by my family in 1980, including the buli kula necklace which is featured on the $100 bill.
He closed the museum in 1963 and then kept the collection in his house until he died in 1971, aged 73. As a boy, I lived with him in the museum with my mother and two sisters, and I became fascinated with all these wonderful things. In 1970, he was diagnosed with cancer and so I decided to help him make a catalogue of his collection, so his knowledge would not be lost, he had become a great expert. I was 20 at the time. We made a catalogue before he died in 1971.
He had never been able to travel to the Pacific, the region he loved most, because of his job and lack of money, so I decided that I wanted to travel there to see the places he had never seen, and to learn more about Pacific cultures. I did a PhD in social anthropology at Cambridge University, and one of my supervisors, the linguist Professor George Milner, who wrote The Fijian Grammar, told me that Fiji was a marvellous place and that in the Lau Islands the people were still making canoes and tanoa and masi and mats — the kinds of thing in my grandfather’s collection — and were still living a rich cultural life.
So, after receiving permission from the Fiji Government, the Lau Provincial Office and Tui Nayau (Ratu Mara), I eventually came to Fiji, was based at Fiji Museum and lived for two years on Kabara (March 1977-March 1979) as well as visiting other Lauan islands including Lakeba, where I attended the Boselevu Vakaturaga at Tubou in 1978. I returned to Fiji for three months in 1980 and also attended the big kaumatanigone soqo at Rewa when the children of Ratu Mara and Ro Lala were brought to Rewa to be presented to their mother’s people.
I was welcomed in Fiji and given a home from home, and so I have always maintained a special connection with Fiji. In 1980, when Fergus Clunie was Director of Fiji Museum, I persuaded my family to donate some pieces as a thank you to Fiji for helping me with my studies. The inspiration of my grandfather and Fiji led to me getting a job here at the University of East Anglia, where in 1988 I started a department called the Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania & the Americas, and where I could teach students about Pacific art and culture.
I have also been able to curate two large exhibitions, one about the whole of Polynesia (Pacific Encounters, 2006) and one about Fiji (Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific, 2016). Some of my students now have jobs as curators of Pacific collections in museums all over the world, including in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in the British Museum and in the Bishop Museum in Hawai’i. So my grandfather and Fiji have been the main inspirations for my work as a university teacher and curator.
TIMES: What is fascinating about the Fijian collection?
HOOPER: For me, what is exciting about Fijian art and collections is how finely and beautifully made things are, which shows the pride of the people who made them, both in the 19th century and today. When I was on Kabara I spent one week trying to make a tanoa, and I then realised the skill needed to make something like that. I was also always impressed by the skills of the ladies who make masi and gatu, not only beating the cloth but preparing the dyes and putting on the designs. A big gatu vakatoga can be more than 60 metres long and five metres wide. Many of these I saw were presented at Ratu Mara’s final mortuary exchange (vakataraisulu) on Lakeba in 2005.
TIMES: Any particular favourite and why?
HOOPER: I have many favourites, but at the moment my favourite piece is the 8m-long drua, Adi Yeta, which was built by craftsmen from Vulaga and Ogea in 2014 and 2015 for our exhibition here. She is built to the highest traditional standards and is absolutely beautiful, in addition to being an operating canoe that participated in the Hibiscus Festival canoe races on Suva Harbour in 2015. She is so beautiful that the National Maritime Museum in London want to put her in the special permanent exhibition they will open in 2018, called Pacific Encounters, where she will be the key exhibit, and will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people, who will be able to admire the skills of her makers. Canoes have a future in Fiji, both for local use and for use in the tourist industry, so Adi Yeta is a great ambassador for Fiji.
TIMES: How challenging was it in putting together such an extensive collection and why do you think it’s important to have it preserved for such exhibitions?
HOOPER: Three of us curated the current exhibition: me, Dr Karen Jacobs and Katrina Talei Igglesden (whose mother is from Rewa). All of us are based here at the University of East Anglia. The main preparations began in 2011 when we started a research project about Fijian collections, partnership with colleagues in Cambridge, the British Museum, Fiji Museum and other places. There are many fine old Fijian things preserved in museums in Europe, America and the Pacific.
The best collections are in Cambridge and Fiji Museum. It was hard to choose only 280 items from many possibilities, but we looked for things which were rare, finely made, and especially those whose history we knew, things which had belonged to Fijians and Europeans whose names were known, such as Ratu Cakobau and the first governor, Sir Arthur Gordon, and to missionaries. We also wanted to show fine things from the present day, so the canoe was made and we commissioned a fine masi from Cakaudrove and borrowed Adi Litia Dugdale Mara’s masi wedding dress (made in 1991) from Fiji Museum, which has lent more than 20 fine pieces to the exhibition here.
In this way we wanted to celebrate the fine things made in the past and the present. Fijian art is not well known in Europe, so we wanted people to be able to enjoy it and learn about it in the exhibition and in the complete fully illustrated catalogue which we have published, and which will be available from Fiji Museum later in February . The catalogue will enable people in Fiji to see what was in the exhibition and learn about Fijian art and art history.
TIMES: Any particular Fijian artefact from your view is quite rare and has an interesting story behind it?
HOOPER: There are many. Perhaps the enormous tanoa, 42 inches across, which was given by Ratu Seru Cakobau to Commodore Sir William Wiseman of HMS Curacoa in 1865. This is now in the British Museum, and it was probably given to the British captain as part of Ratu Cakobau’s efforts to develop a close relationship with Queen Victoria, the most powerful chief in the world, which eventually led to Cession in 1874.
TIMES: Queen Elizabeth II visited the exhibition early this month, how interesting was it for her to view some of the artefacts which also signified the historical link between Fiji and Great Britain?
HOOPER: When the President of Fiji had an audience with The Queen last October, after he had opened the exhibition here, he gave her a copy of the exhibition catalogue and told her about it. This led to a communication to me from her Assistant Private Secretary, saying she would like to visit the exhibition so we arranged it and she came on January 27 to look round the exhibition. She did this because of her continuing fondness for, and interest in, Fiji. She wanted to come to visit the exhibition, even though she is no longer officially Queen of Fiji and head of state. She still feels a special connection. This is why she asked that Fiji be included among the Commonwealth countries who were invited to perform at her 90th birthday pageant at Windsor Castle in May last year. The canoe was there alongside the RFMF military band. So she was very interested in all the exhibits in our exhibition, and is of course quite knowledgeable about Fiji.
TIMES: Was there any particular artefact that drew her attention?
HOOPER: Yes, we have one of the tabua which was presented to her at the State reception/veiqaravi vakaturaga on Albert Park in December 1953. It was presented as the cavuikelekele, and she kept it. It is now in the Royal Collection. We also have movie film of her receiving this tabua, and she was very interested to look at the film and see the tabua and reminisce about her happy visit to Fiji in 1953, soon after she became Queen.
TIMES: Would you like to add anything else?
HOOPER: In a couple of weeks a shipment of books will arrive in Suva, where they can be bought at the Fiji Museum, which is the co-publisher (I do not know the price yet). They are paperback and hardback versions. The book is Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific by Steven Hooper, published by Fiji Museum and the University of East Anglia. It is 288 pages, with three maps and more than 360 coloured illustrations, bibliography and index. It is the most comprehensive book about Fijian art ever published.
