WSU research key to new Metropolitan exhibit

Carol Ivory, professor and chair of Fine Arts at Washington State University, was the first art historian in the world to focus on the Marquesas Islands. Her years of research and expertise have played an integral role in the upcoming Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibit, Adorning the World: Art of the Marquesas Islands. Ivory collaborated on choosing objects for the exhibit and writing the catalog with Eric Kjellgren, the museum’s assistant curator of the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.

In selecting pieces for the show, Ivory and Kjellgren drew from resources worldwide,  borrowing from museums in Israel, Honolulu, Hawaii, Salem, Massachusetts and many others.

“The focus was on finding the best and oldest objects,” Ivory said. “The Met was looking for aesthetics and beauty.”

Ivory will attend the opening of the exhibit and present two invited lectures, including one at the Bard Graduate Center on Monday, May 9, and a second at the Metropolitan Museum on May 22.

“It’s a relatively small exhibit, 65 objects and about 10 drawings and paintings,” said Ivory. “But it’s at the Metropolitan. Not only is it one of the most respected museums in the world but it’s in the center of the art universe. Yes, I am excited about this,” she said.

The prestige of the museum aside, the show is perhaps also significant to Ivory because she is a native New Yorker. Ivory was raised in the Bronx and, after completing her B.A. in history at Fordham and her masters in American civilization at New York University, she taught high school on Long Island for 10 years.

It was a year-long trip around the world that sparked her interest in the art of the Pacific and prompted a return to school. Ivory completed a masters and Ph.D. in art history at the University of Washington. Hers is the only art history dissertation that focuses on Marquesan art; she is only one of about a dozen scholars in a variety of fields (ethnohistory, archaeology, linguistics) in the world whose research centers on the Marquesas.