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.