This story is part of Ensemble’s colour week, presented by Resene

Māori carvings acquired into any museum in this country between the 1800s to 1950s were often covered with red paint. What happens when we peel back the layers?

Leading up to the 1953 Royal tour, workers at the Auckland museum were busy painting a fresh coat of red paint over Māori whakairo (carvings) to make sure they looked spick-and-span for the Queen. 

Whether the painters knew it or not, it wasn’t the first time this had happened. When the museum first acquired taonga in 1929, many were covered in their first coat of red paint. Two of these taonga, Tiki the gateway and Hotunui the meeting house came in with innovative and unique polychromatic details on their carvings, but were soon covered in a veil of what’s now referred to as museum red. 

Curator taonga Māori at the museum, Nigel Borell (Pirirākau, Ngāterangi, Ngāti Ranginui, Te Whakatōhea), says Tāmaki Paenga Hira wasn’t the only museum in the country affected by this. “Museum red has its origins and context in the work of early anthropologists and ethnologists here in Aotearoa.” He says when they were documenting and recording Māori art practices, they also created an orthodoxy of what ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Māori art looks like.

“Part of that orthodoxy was the use of kōkōwai, which is the red ochre pigment traditionally used to cover our carvings and sacred items.” He said ethnologists and anthropologists covering carvings with red paint was in a “crude” and “expedient” way of referencing that practice. 

“Māori arts being shaped by the orthodoxy and the power that these people brokered in our museums and in reporting our culture was profound to the point that when we think about what Māori art is, we often think it’s red, black and white.” 

While those colours are very significant, they're not the only colours used. Borell says Māori art has used other natural earth pigments including purple, blue, grey and brown, and natural bark dyes. He said while the colour blue might feel quite contemporary, it’s significant to Māori culture in the context of the sea, sky, or an ethereal, spiritual place. “But we wouldn’t know that today unless we unpacked that orthodoxy.” 

The original colouring of taonga tells a story. Some carvings in the museum are stained in a blackish colour, showing how they were buried in a swamp to safeguard them from raiding iwi. ‍‍

Borell says museological practices work hand in hand with “how ethnologists and anthropologists view who we were, talked about us, collected us, recorded our knowledge systems and didn’t record others that weren’t palatable.” Some of them worked stints in multiple regional museums, he says, so their influence is felt across collections.

“I think they were aware of it,” says Borell. He says the orthodoxy was set up and then supported by European academics and writers that sat in other institutions that recorded and researched it. Borell says, “anything that fell out of an orthodoxy of acceptability, palatability or suited the paradigm that they’re trying to present was edited out, literally and figuratively.”

The general practice of acquiring carvings into any museum in this country between the 1800s to 1950s, says Borell, was to cover it with red paint. Often the taonga covered in paint were architectural structures or works that are more susceptible to the elements. Borell says, in a way, “it’s more fortuitous than planned that the painters actually helped, in some cases, stabilise the wood and preserve the carving.”

Borell says some of the carvings already came into the museum with red paint. Carvings from Te Arawa, for example, are painted red as they’ve been made to mimic the idea of kōkōwai. The difference is that the practice is authored by the artist. “A Māori worldview doesn’t rest on it needing to be pre-European to be authentic.”

What is kōkōwai?‍

“Kōkōwai is meant to represent Kurawaka which is the most sacred part of Papatūānuku, but also the female anatomy,” says Borell. “So it’s the very essence of life and fertility.”

In the Māori creation story, Kurawaka was the place where the first woman, Hineahuone, was created. Tāne, her creator, scraped the red earth of Kurawaka to form the shape of a woman before pressing his nose against hers to share the breath of life.

“That’s why the carvings are covered in that, but also why red is so important in our culture.”

Sarah Hudson, the founder of Kauae Raro, a research collective who promote customary paint making, writes that, “kōkōwai was used in ceremony, and adorned tapu objects. We also know that our tīpuna adorned their skin with earth colours, including red.” Hudson suggests kōkōwai may have also been part of everyday life due to the evidence of red ochre in both tapu and noa contexts.

In practice, the haematite which occurs naturally in areas of volcanic activity looks more of an orangey-red colour, as opposed to the bright red and dark red used in museums. Borell says, “the way kōkōwai has been interpreted has been quite crudely applied in just red.

“There’s a healthy dose of naivety, arrogance, and ignorance in the mix of the red paint being used.” ‍

Peeling back the layers‍

In the late 70s and early 80s, museum practice began to shift and the layers of red paint were stripped back along with the new ways of thinking.

Tiki was covered in red paint for the opening of the museum in 1929 and again for the Royal Tour, even though black and white photographs of it prior to the museum’s acquisition showed that he had different colours. ‍‍

When the red paint was removed in 1982, Tiki revealed his vivid polychromatic clothing of red, black, white and green bringing the pounamu and manaia around him to life. In 1984, Tiki became a mascot of Te Māori, the watershed exhibition of customary Māori art. ‍

Meanwhile, the removal of red paint from Hotunui which began in 1981 only finished recently in 2017, due to it being a much larger project dependent on resources and funding. Hotunui was loaned to the museum for safekeeping by its iwi, Ngāti Maru, who have been part of the rectifying process of restoring the original colours. 

Though no longer practised, you can still see museum red around. Tāmaki Paenga Hira’s two rounds of painting can be seen on carvings from Rangitihi meeting house. Towards the top of the panel where the carving may have been mounted, a darker shade of red paint shows through. ‍

Borell says, “I suppose in the 80s and 90s, we started critiquing what was written with more prominence, and realising that actually, those practices were so much more diverse.” He says lessons about diversity and dynamism of Māori colours can be learnt looking at weavers who haven’t lost the practices of natural dyes. 

The intentions of past museological practices are sad, believes Borell, but oftentimes there’s lots of warm support to rectify past wrongs. “Sometimes it’s been initiated by us and sometimes it’s been initiated by descendants [of the taonga] and we’re more than keen to present the work in a way that brings mana back to the items and in a way that those descendents see appropriate.” 

Borell thinks all museums are susceptible to palatability. He says his role as a Māori curator is to be spokesperson for the taonga when they don’t have an advocate. 

“Museum practice today is about responding to those no matter what the request is and trying to understand our own history at the same time and being honest about that.”