Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia

Preview: written before the show opened

Some of the bark cloths in Gallery 359 were diplomatic gifts from senior Samoan chiefs to Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny, who argued the chiefs' case while the couple lived in Samoa from 1890 to 1894. The chiefs called the author of Treasure Island "Tusitala", Teller of Tales.

Groups of women make tapa from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree and paint it by hand. In Polynesia it is the cloth of ceremonial exchange. The Met shows 19th-century pieces from Fiji, Samoa and Futuna from its collection, adds a Niuean hiapo lent by Te Papa, and hangs a pair of large Fijian panels, masi kesa, together for the first time. Samoan chiefs gave cloth as statecraft, which sets a high bar for December's office Secret Santa.

You stay in one gallery, and it's free with Museum admission, so it fits any Met visit. Alongside the old cloths hangs a monochrome painting by the Niuean poet and painter John Puhiatau Pule, whose early work borrowed hiapo's grids.