South Pacific Museums: Experiments in Culture" ed by Chris Healy, Andrea Witcomb

This issue is a collection of outstanding analyses of museums in the South Pacific, written by cultural, museum and architectural critics, and historians. A series of snapshots introduce the reader to key museums in the region and longer essays explore these museums in broad terms.

Part One introduces three different museums in distinctive national contexts – Te Papa, the Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the National Museum of Australia. Essays in this part grapple with the role of these museums in the nation at particular historical moments under specific political pressures.
Part Two, 'New Knowledges', documents practices and exhibitions at the point of tension between indigenous and non-indigenous interests in the museum.
Part three, 'New Experiences', explores the ways in which museums in the South Pacific are producing that ineffable cultural phenomenon – experience.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
01 Experiments in culture: An introduction — Chris Healy and Andrea Witcomb
NEW MUSEUMS
02 Reforming nationhood: The free market and biculturalism at Te Papa — Paul Williams
03 Museums of New Caledonia: The old, the new and the balance of the two — Marianne Tissandier
04 Contested sites of identity and the cult of the new: The Centre Culturel Tjibaou and the constitution of culture in New Caledonia — Kylie Message
05 National Museum of Australia — Linda Young
06 Pluralism and exhibition practice at the National Museum of Australia — Mathew Trinca and Kirsten Wehner
07 Melbourne Museum — Ian McShane
08 Civic laboratories: Museums, cultural objecthood and the governance of the social — Tony Bennett
NEW KNOWLEDGES
09 Museums as cultural guardians — Deidre Brown
10 The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa — Huhana Smith
11 There’s so much in looking at those barks: Dja Dja Wurrung etchings 2004–05 — Pamie Fung and Sara Wills
12 Gab Titui Cultural Centre — Leilani Bin-Juda
13 The museum as cultural agent: The Vanuatu Cultural Centre extension worker program — Lissant Bolton
14 Tuning the museum: The harmonics of official culture — Ian Wedde
15 Bunjilaka — Moira G. Simpson
16 Very special treatment — Chris Healy
17 Hiroshima mon amour: Representation and violence in new museums of the Pacific — Diane Losche
18 The Auckland War Memorial Museum, Tamaki Paenga Hira — Elizabeth Rankin
19 The National Museum of Australia as danse macabre: Baroque allegories of the popular — John Macarthur and Naomi Stead
20 The Museum of Sydney — Kate Gregory
21 How style came to matter: Do we need to move beyond the politics of representation? — Andrea Witcomb
22 The Australian Centre for the Moving Image — Natalia Radywyl
23 Spirit house — Ross Gibson