Re-Presenting Micronesia in Long Beach: Memories of a Tourist Collection.

Abstract

This thesis explores the biography of 18 objects created on the island of Yap in the 1990s at the Ethnic Art Institute of Micronesia (EAIM), an open workshop space in which Micronesians were employed to make objects for sale to tourists. The institute employed the local Micronesian community, mostly men from the main island, to recreate cultural objects recorded in the Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition 1908-1910 journals. Eighteen of the types of objects produced by EAIM are featured on display at the Pacific Island Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM) located in Long Beach, California, and have been since it opened in October 2010. PIEAM has a wider focus on the arts of the Pacific, including Polynesia and Melanesia, but clearly emphasizes Micronesia and the objects made at the EAIM. Both the museum and EAIM were projects spearheaded by Dr. Gumbiner. This thesis explores how the cultural objects, which are produced at the EAIM and displayed at the PIEAM in Long Beach, California, can be seen as representing and perpetuating a postcolonial situation.