American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History. South Sea Island Hall.; South Sea Islands; South Sea Islands Hall; Hall of the Pacific Islands; Collections from the South Sea Islands; Collections from the Pacific Islands; Collections from South Sea Islands; Pacific Islands; Pacific Islands Collections; Pacific Islands Hall; Drummond Hall; Isaac Wyman Drummond Memorial Hall; South Sea Island Natives; South Pacific Hall; South Sea Natives; South Sea Island Hall
birth: 1910
death: approximately 1959-1961
Permanent exhibition. Located on Floor 4, Section 6. Opened 1910 and closed approximately 1959-1961. The South Sea Islands Hall at the American Museum of Natural History covered the ethnology of the South Pacific including Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia. The hall was largely revised in 1914 (1, 1914, p. 74). The Drummond Collection, a gift of Katharine Wyman Drummond Herbert, featuring objects of carved jade and other Asian art, opened in the tower on April 6, 1934. Curators Robert Lowie and Margaret Mead and Museum artists Albert Operti and Sigurd Neandross made contributions to the hall (1, 1912, p. 71; 1, 1932, p. 65; 1, 1934, p. 8).
Major features of the South Sea Island Hall were mannequins of a Tahitian priest in a fire-walking ceremony scene, Tahitians grating coconut, preparing kava, and weaving, and a Maori warrior. Exhibits on view included tapa or bark cloth, masks, a Hawaiian feather cape, swinging picture frames with images of Samoan life, ceremonial adzes from the Cook Islands, a miniature model of a Manus village in the Admiralty Islands, and a cast of a moai from Easter Island, brought back from the Templeton Crocker Expedition in 1935 (2, 1911, p. 93; 2, 1913, p. 107-109; 2, 1921, p. 120; 2, 1939, p. 148). Some material from New Guinea was exhibited in the Philippine Hall for lack of room in the South Sea Island Hall (2, 1935, p. 132-133). The hall featured collections of material from Samoa, Tonga, Hawaii, the Marquesas, the Gilbert, Marshall, and Caroline Islands, Fiji, the Bismarck archipelago, the Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, New Guinea, New Zealand, and Australia (2, 1916, p. 132; 2, 1919, p. 120-121).
Located in the tower room of the hall, the Drummond Collection, more topically related to the Chinese and Siberian Hall, featured carvings of Chinese jade and amber, Japanese ivory and sword guards, and bronze. Many of the cases featured Dr. Isaac Wyman Drummond's original arrangement. A white jade composite in the center of the room was a gift to the Chinese Emperor Qianlong from his court officials (2, 1936, p. 132).