Presents works of art selected from the South and Southeast Asian and Islamic collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, lessons plans, and classroom activities.

"Simply the best book ever published on this subject." --Sir David Attenborough Lavish photography and groundbreaking texts unlock the magic of the island cultures of Indonesia, Malaysia, and East Timor through examples of textiles, sculpture, and metalwork from this prestigious collection. Eyes of the Ancestors takes an in-depth look at the Dallas Museum of Art's world-renowned collection of artworks from Island Southeast Asia. Beautiful photography and essays by distinguished international scholars unlock the magic of the island cultures of this region. Leading cultural anthropologist Reimar Schefold introduces these texts, which investigate various indigenous art forms from a fresh, art history perspective. They describe the contexts, purposes, and aesthetic influences of a range of objects, from intricately woven sacred and ceremonial textiles to carved ancestral figures. Also featured are gold and metalwork designs as well as weaponry and jewelry--most dating back more than a hundred years. A 19th-century mouth mask in the collection, from the Leti Islands, is one of only our known to be in existence. Carved in the shape of a bird's head, this wooden mask was used in ritual dances. Other spectacular examples from the collection also reflect the beliefs and practices of these island cultures.

Drawing on the famous collections of the Musee Barbier-Mueller this unusual and beautifully illustrated book brings together these cultures to demonstrate the astonishing aesthetic similarities between civilizations located far apart in both space and time. While the arts of the Easter Islands and Maori civilizations have been well known for some years the creativity of the inhabitants of Borneo, Sulawei, and Sumatra is less familiar, and is scarcely represented in the major public collections. On the basis of the linguistic consonance between the thousand or more modern languages spoken in Oceania, anthropologists and archaeologists have begun to trace the cultural links throughout this area, in particular through the rituals and beliefs which are often the inspiration for the forms and functions of the artifacts. Masks in human or animal form, made of tortoiseshell, wood, dried leaves or clay; drums, shields, and batons; multicolored clothing for war and peace; intricate jewelry; as well as a wide variety of everyday containers and implements -- all the treasures in this collection display a sophistication of ornament and technical expertise which rival the products of ancient European civilizations. Scholarly essays by over thirty international experts focus on each island or civilization and form a fascinating study which will certainly become the standard work in this field, of interest to both students and the general reader.