Pacific Encounters Gallery Tour at the National Maritime Museum
The newly created (2018) and critically acclaimed Pacific Encounters Gallery at the National Maritime Museum explores the first encounters between Europeans and Polynesians and how Captain Cook’s shipboard artists translated and transformed these ‘new’ and ‘exotic’ lands for a Western audience fascinated by very different landscapes and cultures.
The tour will explore how art, including William Hodges’ evocative scenes from Tahiti was often a tool used for particular ends in an expanding ‘second’ British Empire.