The exhibition is exciting for multiple reasons. The installation of objects acquired by barter in the Pacific is beautiful, compelling and strange. Looking at the objects, whether the pale, fragile bark cloths (one of which was said to have been made into a blue fancy dress for a European shepherdess), or the extraordinary display of fishhooks, or the Mourning Dress from Tahiti, or the red-feathered warrior’s head with dog’s teeth, one can only wonder why the voyagers acquired these objects and what values they gave them. How does cross-cultural collecting contribute to our knowledge of Pacific cultures in the eighteenth century, or indeed to our understanding of the European imagination? How were these objects housed on the boats, and what did the crew collect in comparison to the naturalists? There was a difference between those objects that would be considered anthropological – fish hooks, shells etc. – and those pieces which had an aesthetic art-historical brilliance, such as the Mourning Dress and the Red feathered head. Both these outstanding objects were bought by the dealer George Humphrey when he frequented the docks to buy from the returning crews. Humphrey had an eye for an extraordinary artefact, and his acquisitions went separately to Göttingen, not being part of the Forster collections. Could this mean that the sailors were more aesthetic in their art-historical acquisitions than the scientists? The comparative absence of Australian indigenous objects among those collections brought back by Cook and his crews on different voyages could be explained by the fact that the voyagers were tired by the time they reached Australia, or by the fact that indigenous Australians refused to barter. Still, did boomerangs fail to appeal as collectable objects to the European imagination?

The plurality of Cooks has been encouraged by the absence of his correspondence, destroyed by his widow. At the conference, Nigel Erskine re-evaluated Georg Forster’s warts-and-all biographical essay on Cook, soon to be published in English, which predates the official biographies. In contrast to the many imaginary Cooks that were presented, the figure of the Polynesian navigator and priest Tupaia, who accompanied Cook, grew increasingly in stature, principally in the contributions to the conference by Greg Dening and Paul Tapsell. While it is well known that Tupaia, from the island of Ra’iatea in the Society Islands, provided maps and navigational skills to Cook, his career as an artist – perhaps ‘the artist of first contact imagery’ – is in the process of ‘rediscovery’. Delicate watercolours in Indian ink from Cook’s first voyage, in a volume bequeathed by Sir Joseph Banks to the British Library, contain the first images of Australian Aborigines in bark canoes, a drawing of Banks in an act of gift exchange, bartering with a Polynesian for a cray-fish, and many other moving representations.

Cross-cultural encounters have been a constant part of Australian history before and after Cook’s voyages. For which reason, when asked to make a bid in the year 2000 to convene the 32^nd International Conference of Art History, I devised the concept for the conference as: Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence. Within art history it was a subject that had been touched upon but never developed as a global one, as applicable to ancient and medieval art history as to the modern world and Australia. On May 25 we launched the website (www.cihamelbourne2008.com.au), with an image by the indigenous artist Tommy McRae of a Corroboree or William Buckley dancing with the Wathaurong people. Buckley was a giant ‘wild white man’, one of the first Europeans to learn indigenous languages. Buckley has been variously interpreted by Aboriginal artists as a figure of reconciliation. The choice of image signalled the importance of indigeneity in the conference. For a session on ‘Indigeneity/Aboriginality, Art/Culture and Institutions’, the Melbourne organising committees arranged for three chairs: Philippe Peltier, from the Musée du Quai Branley; Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, from the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa Wellington; and Brenda Croft, from the National Gallery of Australia. Their appointment recognises the important theoretical developments in indigenous studies in both New Zealand and Australia. The first meeting of an international congress of art history in the southern hemisphere epitomises the expansion of the field throughout the globe. The international committee of art history, or CIHA, as it is known, suggests what many people have recognised: that art and the discourses around it are increasingly global. Held every four years, the conference is known colloquially as the art-historical Olympics and is the world’s most prestigious and significant international art history conference. The sessions and programme have been developed in constant consultation with colleagues in Australia and abroad.