A precious STONE

• Published date: 26 March 2022

When Gerard O’Regan started work at the National Museum, later to become Te Papa, as a teenager during the 1980s, the late Piri Sciascia was a dynamic, driving force in the Maori renaissance

Already elevated to Director of the Council for Maori and South Pacific Arts — and later to become kaumatua to the governor-general, prime minister and Cabinet — Sciascia was at the time also a leading figure in Te Maori, the exhibition that wowed United States audiences before returning to New Zealand to do the same.

A key element in the landmark Te Maori exhibition of priceless traditional artwork, which came to Dunedin in 1987, was a pounamu touchstone, Te Mauri o te Maori. That large emerald-green stone had been collected from Southern mountains by New Zealand’s foremost pounamu expert the late Russell Beck and Sciascia, who was of Ngati Kahungunu and Kai Tahu descent.

A generation later, O’Regan is overseeing his first major Maori exhibition in his role as Curator Maori at Tuhura Otago Museum.

That exhibition, Kura Pounamu: Our Treasured Stone, opens in Dunedin today.

It brings to the South for the first time an unrivalled touring collection of ancient and contemporary pounamu pieces.

It too has travelled the world before coming here, and it too has a link to Sciascia.

One of the new trustees of Te Mauri o te Maori, which resides in Southland, is Sciascia’s son, Tumarangai Sciascia.

‘‘He asked if we might be able to bring Te Mauri o te Maori up from Southland to join the exhibition,’’ O’Regan says.

‘‘That’s a special [local] addition to the exhibition here.

‘‘So, we’ve got these wonderful historical threads.’’

Kura Pounamu tells the story of Te Waipounamu’s most prized material taoka, treasure. Featuring more than 200 pounamu pieces — from a 170kg touch stone and hefty toki, adzes, to ceremonial mere and intricately carved hei tiki — the exhibition explores pounamu’s traditional significance and enduring value.

First exhibited at Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, in 2009, Kura Pounamu then toured China between 2012 and 2014, and was shown in Paris in 2017, one of the exhibition’s lead curators, Te Papa’s Curator Maori, Dougal Austin, says.

In 2019, it was on display in Christchurch and Nelson.

And now Kura Pounamu is here.

‘‘Otago Museum cares for and displays a lot of taoka pounamu ... but this exhibition shares a broader narrative and focus than we’d normally have a chance to see,” O’Regan says.

‘‘It’s lovely to see our whanauka’s awesome mahi that has travelled...