OHA criticizes auction of Hawaiian artifacts

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs is condemning the Paris auction of what is being billed as the world’s largest private collection of Hawaiian art and will ask the seller to stop or delay the sale in order to negotiate a “morally appropriate resolution.”

The OHA Board of Trustees “objects to the commodification and sensationalism of the willful and wanton sale of such a large collection of the material history of the Native Hawaiian people as aesthetic art and curiosities,” says a resolution approved Wednesday by the board’s Beneficiary Advocacy and Empowerment Committee.

The resolution, approved by a 7-0 vote, is expected to be endorsed by the full nine-member board when it meets today.

French auction house Aguttes is auctioning off nearly 1,100 items in a sale that began Wednesday and is scheduled to run through Friday.

“Never before have so many Hawaiian objects been brought together outside of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu,” says promotional material for the event.

Up for auction is a spear, estimated to be worth about $80,000 and said to be acquired by Capt. James Cook during his third and last visit to Hawaii in 1779, and a war helmet, estimated to be worth $60,000 and described as being part of a collection assembled by one of the first French scientific expeditions to Hawaii and formerly displayed by a French University.

Other items include an 8-inch black, red and yellow feathered necklace, a war helmet, a flag from the Kingdom of Hawaii, fishhooks and a war drum. There are numerous other items from islands across the South Pacific.

The collector of “The Treasures of Oceanic Art” is Rainer Warner “Jerry” Bock, who is described as one of the world’s leading dealers in pre-Columbian art and who compiled Hawaiian items over two decades.

Bock is either a current or former Maui resident and gallery owner who, according to records, has run businesses registered in Honolulu, including Splendors of the World Inc. and Haiku Fine Arts LLC.

Last week a handful of Native Hawaiian protesters on vacation in Paris picketed the auction house, where the items were on display for a week before the sale. In one video post on social media, the sign-holding protesters said they were skeptical about the legitimacy of the artifacts and were not getting a lot of reassurances from the auction house.

According to its resolution, OHA is requesting that Aguttes suspend and delay the auction and enter into “immediate discussions, consultations and negotiations” with OHA to bring about “a reasonable, just and morally appropriate resolution and disposition for the benefit of all parties.”

Auctioneer Claude Aguttes did not respond to an email request for comment Wednesday.

State Rep. Kaniela Ing (D, South Maui) applauded OHA for taking a stand.

Ing said that while he respects the property rights of private collectors, just anything “acquired” from Hawaii pre-contact era is essentially stolen.

“Ideally I’d like another collector to buy the whole thing and donate it to the Bishop Museum,” he said. “I guess that’s wishful thinking.”

Ing said he contacted OHA and the Bishop Museum and neither institution has funds to acquire the artifacts.

Ing, the chairman of the House Committee on Ocean, Marine Resources and Hawaiian Affairs, said he would look into what it would take to establish a fund in the state budget earmarked for such a purpose.

OHA last year engineered the return to Hawaii of the feathered cloak and helmet that Hawaii island chief Kalaniopuu presented to Cook in 1779. They had ended up in a New Zealand Museum but they are now on indefinite loan to the Bishop Museum.

“These last vestiges of the Native Hawaiian material culture hold great and priceless meaning to the identity, heritage and cultural survival of the Native Hawaiian people,” OHA’s resolution says.

According to the resolution, OHA is concerned that some of the artifacts may contain human bone or teeth or that others may have questionable provenance.

Promotional material for the auction quotes Bock as saying, “I owe this auction to my friend Claude Aguttes. He came to see me one day, and just said: let these objects go; watch them scatter all over the world, like birds carrying a message of the intrinsic beauty of art from the Southern Seas, and evidence of your eye and taste.”

It also asserts that he’s worked to open a museum on Maui but was not supported by local politicians.

But, according to OHA, the agency has no record of any consultation, proposal, discussion or communications with its office regarding this claim.