Overview
In the past, many audiences regarded Māori and Pacific objects in museums as primarily ethnographic items. Art of the Pacific played a part in shifting this perception, inviting people to see them as artworks.
Brake was commissioned by the Arts Council to take images for the book in 1975. Many of the taonga he photographed were later included in the Te Maori exhibition of 1984, and Brake’s images were widely seen in the handbook, posters, postcards, and calendars that accompanied the New Zealand tour of this landmark exhibition.