A preserved Maori head with traditional facial tattoos, kept as a trophy of war or for ritual reasons.
we explain how a museum in France came to possess a Maori head
Also called mokomokai
Example sentencesExamples
- The American Museum of Natural History in New York has more than 30 Maori heads.
- The skull recalls the artist's previous use of a Maori head as an evocation of the past but on these there is an imprint of the present.
- A photo of a plaster cast copy was removed out of respect for the sacredness of the Maori head.
- They have refused New Zealand's request for the museum to send back the four Maori heads in its collection.
- Last month the Field Museum of natural history in Chicago returned a Maori head and other bones to New Zealand.
- Earlier this year a Maori head was sent back to New Zealand so it could be returned to a tribe.
- The Maori head, or toi moko, was brought to Britain in the 1840s and kept at Warrington Museum in Cheshire.
- As for Moby Dick, I was suprised as to just how funny the first chapters are (and relevant to New Zealand - we meet a fellow trading shrunken Maori heads within a few pages of the start).
- Glasgow city council agreed to return three Maori heads and a leg bone (said to be from a chief killed in 1790) from the Kelvingrove Art Gallery.
- He recently instigated the repatriation of a tattooed Maori head and skeletal remains to New Zealand.