He Toi Ora – A Living History

In the Māori world view, all art forms carry within them an enduring relationship between the past and the present. Many carvings are thus perceived as living and connected to the ancestors. For this reason, the descendants of the original creators or owners should be able to renew this important connection. He Toi Ora means: a living art.
But from which iwi (tribal groups) in New Zealand do the museum objects now looked after in the Museum Fünf Kontinente originate? The research comes up against boundaries: almost all of the pieces were acquired in London between 1825 and 1914, where their trail is lost. Often, the question of their origin can only be approached based on certain clues.
The search for these clues begins with historical photos and documents. They provide information about the previous owners from whom the museum acquired the objects and their motivation for collecting them. Another piece of the puzzle is provided by wood analyses, which offer information about the different tree species used for carving.
The carving motifs can also be part of provenance research, pointing towards specific stylistic regions. However, Māori knowledge is of vital importance when classifying and tracing the pieces.
In close consultation with Māori experts, the exhibition was jointly developed by the museum’s Oceania curator and David Jones from the Rongowhakaata iwi as Māori curator. The show presents methods used to research the objects, inviting visitors to participate by using a microscope and identifying carving patterns. At the same time, it introduces visitors to Māori philosophy.
Although in most cases only clues suggest the exact origin, one object – the Tāwhaki post figure – could be clearly identified as coming from a Māori meeting house near Gisborne. For this reason, the last room is dedicated to the ancestor Tāwhaki and Rongowhakaata iwi. Films, interviews, a photo installation and modern art objects show the close connection between Tāwhaki and the people of his iwi living today.
The exhibition arose from our museum’s ongoing research project Thinking through Wood, which is a part of the project Beyond the Nature/Culture Divide: Reimagining Human-Environment Relations in Museums of LMU Munich and the University of Cambridge, supported by the Free State of Bavaria.

Last edited on 03.11.2025