Dr. Fanny Wonu Veys received her PhD in the anthropology of material culture at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK), and completed post-doctoral research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (USA) and the Musée du quai Branly, Paris (France). She is currently curator Oceania at the National Museum of World Cultures (Tropenmuseum, Afrika Museum and Museum Volkenkunde) in the Netherlands. She is an affiliated researcher in an Australian Research Council photographic project and a European Research Council focusing on Oceanian collecting histories. Wonu’s research interests are Pacific art and material culture, museums and cultures of collecting, Pacific musical instruments, Pacific textiles, and the significance of historical objects in a contemporary setting.
The first Europeans to collect these sculptures judged them coarse and clumsy, but Giacometti and Moore disagreed.
