New York Art Event

Sounding the Pacific: Musical Instruments of Oceania

This is the first exhibition in an art museum to be devoted exclusively to Oceanic musical instruments. It explores the rich diversity of musical instruments created and used in the Pacific Islands. Drawn primarily from the Metropolitan’s collections, the exhibition features more than fifty instruments from small personal types such as panpipes and courting whistles to larger forms played at performances heard by the entire community, such as the exquisitely carved temple drums of the Austral Islands or the imposing sacred slit gongs of New Guinea. On view through September 6th, 2010.