A new monograph is out now: "The Tübingen Poupou. A Maori Carving from James Cook’s First Voyage of Discovery" (Volker Harms)
The Museum of the University of Tübingen MUT hosts a number of unique artifacts. The highlight of the Tübingen Ethnological Collection is the object called „poupou“—a panel with an ancestor‘s depiction from a meeting house in New Zealand. Its special importance derives from the fact that it hails from the first expedition to the South Pacific of the British explorer James Cook (1768–1771). It is also the only architectural piece of a Maori building that ever came to a museum outside of New Zealand from one of Cook‘s three expeditions. This publication explains the meaning of the Poupou as a cultural rarity as well as a representative object of Maori culture. At the same time the monograph offers an insight into the era of exploration and voyaging of the 18th century.
