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Our invisible arts
THE actions taken to clean up the
chaos at the National Museum and Art Gallery should begin a
process of revival for the arts in our country.
There is no doubt that they are at present the most neglected of
all aspects of Papua New Guinean society.
It’s natural enough that many newspaper centimeters and much air
and television time is taken up with the pre-occupations of the
day.
The ongoing inability of the Government to act on the reports of
the Guns Committee, the unacceptable and increasingly desperate
attempts to try and bury the outcome of the Moti inquiry, the
investigation into the Finance Department, the increasingly
visible frustration and anger apparent in our cities – these are
the attention-grabbing stories of the day.
But the arts remain and will always be with us.
There is a pre-occupation with “preserving” our traditional
culture.
We have often written of our dislike of that word.
To us, culture “preserved” is dead culture and that is in turn a
false mirror to hold up to PNG contemporary culture.
The word “preservation” is used without much thought.
For many, PNG culture means the irreplaceable wealth of dance
and music and legend and oral history that has been entrusted to
us by our forefathers.
Of course the externals of that culture need to be safeguarded –
the mighty haus tambarans of the Sepik, the intricate structure
of Trobriand canoes, the unique art of the Gogodala people, the
skills and craft of the nation’s traditional potters and a
dazzling kaleidoscope of other cultural icons that must never be
allowed to disappear.
But that doesn’t mean putting them in a storeroom and closing
the door.
Culture is a living concept.
It is not akin to Latin, a dead language.
Latin survives because of the masterful use made of it by
philosophers, raconteurs, historians, essayists and others, and
by the knowledge conveyed in Latin for centuries, mainly through
the church.
PNG culture on the other hand, while referring to the almost
overpowering inheritance of artifacts and skills and beliefs
accumulated over many years, refers just as accurately to our
urban life delineated by cars and discos and crowded cities and
the hurly-burly of contemporary life.
Our hope for the National Museum is to see it become a
interactive collection of past glories, current skills and even
designs and plans and projects for the future.
We would like to see a rapid expansion of the modern wing of the
museum that we understand remains buried in the Gordon
industrial area.
This collection of 20th century machinery, vehicles, war-time
memorabilia and other aspects of modern and contemporary life
deserves the widest exposure.
Museums aside, we pray for a government that will take a serious
view of the parlous condition of the nation’s arts.
The National Cultural Commission tries hard to mount various
festivals and position them around the country each year. But
its budget is a parody of the funds that should be directed to
the arts.
It is obvious that successive governments have cared nothing for
PNG’s arts inheritance or for the role our contemporary artists
should be playing in the development of a new cultural base for
the country.
We only need to look at their blunt refusal to create an Arts
Ministry.
Without such an umbrella, PNG artists must depend on the
generosity of patrons and private enterprise to underpin their
crafts.
And in the dog eats dog, slap-dash impermanence of the modern
PNG business world, that is indeed a rare event.
Where is our great modern architecture, our public buildings
that reflect the spirit of PNG?
Where are the skilled paintings or the satirical plays that
target the pretentiousness and pomposity of many leading
figures?
A well-educated PNG citizen would be hard-pressed to name more
than half a dozen national writers across the whole field of
contemporary PNG literature.
Who if anyone advises our governments on arts matters and if
indeed such a person or persons exist, is action ever taken to
implement the advice?
Until PNG governments accept their responsibility to the arts,
we will continue to be a society showing no external signs of a
creative and growing contemporary culture.
 
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