Some of the boldest abstract designs of the nineteenth century were not painted on canvas but beaten out of tree bark. Starting today, 2 November 2026, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York makes that point in a compact new show: “Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia”, on view at The Met Fifth Avenue until 12 December 2027.
Cloth made from bark
Tapa is a textile made from the softened inner bark of trees, with strips of fibre worked into an entirely new material. The tradition reaches back more than 3,500 years to island Southeast Asia, and across Polynesia it has long marked status and played a central part in major ceremonies. The nineteenth-century pieces in this exhibition were made by women, and they circulated within a wider system of ceremonial giving and exchange.
What strikes visitors first is how modern the works look. Fijian masi panels with crisp stencilled geometry in black and rust brown sit comfortably next to anything a twentieth-century abstract painter produced, yet they come from a completely different logic: patterns that carry rank, relationships and obligations.
Thirteen works in one room
The show gathers thirteen works from Fiji, Samoa, Futuna and Niue in Gallery 359, the In-Focus gallery of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. It is only the second presentation in that space since the wing reopened in May 2025. Among the loans is a hiapo from Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of New Zealand, shown alongside sculpted works from the Met’s own holdings. Many of the pieces are on public view for the first time.
Gifts with a political message
The heart of the exhibition is a group of six textiles that high-ranking Samoan chiefs gave to the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife Fanny Stevenson, who lived in Samoa during the final years of his life. Stevenson was not a neutral guest. In 1892 he published A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, a sharp critique of German, British and American interference that sided with the Samoan chiefs and their customary forms of government.
Seen in that light, the cloths read as deliberate diplomatic moves: Samoan leaders used an established ceremonial framework to draw a famous newcomer into their cultural and political networks. A gift of tapa was never just a present; it created a bond and expected something in return.
Why it is worth the visit
Single-room shows like this one can be easy to overlook in a museum the size of the Met. This one rewards a detour. It reframes textiles often filed under “craft” as sophisticated design, puts women’s labour at the centre, and tells a story in which Pacific leaders are actors rather than backdrops. With a run of more than a year, there is plenty of time to see it – and, as the Met’s autumn calendar shows, the museum follows on 12 November with a photography exhibition on postwar Japan.
Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 359, 2 November 2026 – 12 December 2027.