Customer Reviews

First Light: A Magical Journey

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On September 10, 1984, at first light, New York's Fifth Avenue was the scene of an unusual ceremony. On the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art a group of Maori women wailed the ritual welcome: HAERE MAI !! Their calls were answered and taken up by a group of Maori elders down the avenue, their leader in a feathered cloak, their path cleared of evil spirits by a small band of tattooed warriors ferociously thrusting their spears.

It was opening day of a groundbreaking exhibition at the Met: Te Maori: Maori Art from New Zealand Collections. The elders were in New York to lift the tapu and open the exhibition. Their greeting was for their ancestors, spiritually residing in the 174 taonga (treasures) on display outside New Zealand for the first time. Nine years in the planning, Te Maori was the culmination of a massive exercise in politics and logistics.

Carol O'Biso was the registrar of the exhibition, responsible for the packing and safe passage of these treasures collected from a number of New Zealand museums. First Light: A Magical Journey is her lyrical story of this great adventure.

The "cultural artifacts" are believed by the Maori to be sacred and powerful. Carol, overwhelmed at first by the vast divide between her New York self and the ancient Maori beliefs, struggled to do her job in the midst of controversy over the exhibition. She was excluded by Maori custom from speaking at the many ritual gatherings in museums and meeting houses. Frustration was her constant companion, in those early days. Gradually the power of the collection became entirely real to her and she found herself honoring the treasures in ways she would not have found possible.

Carol spent several years packing, shipping and unpacking the irreplaceable treasures and was under their spell when she returned them to New Zealand in 1986. She handed them over, in yet another ceremony that left her in tears, to a New Zealand registrar for their awe-inspiring progress through New Zealand museums.

Carol's story is a very personal one and some of her early impressions of New Zealand were less than favorable. However the country's charm and especially the strength of the Maoris' respect for their culture led her to a deep appreciation of The Land of the Long White Cloud.

I had the privilege of seeing Te Maori in New Zealand, and First Light brought back vivid memories of its power. I read the book in the early 1990s and then gave it away (read it! you'll love it!), and when I found a copy on Amazon this month I was delighted to be reacquainted with it.

Linda Bulger, 2008

One of the most unexpected, wonderful and funny true day to day experiences of a woman who worked for one of the most prestigious museums in the world. Her journey, both physically and spiritually in creating and formalizing a major exhibit of the Maori People of New Zealand on a world tour. Her writing style was easy to read and I am still searching for a copy of my own!

Thought provoking, moving and fun. The story is told in a masterful way that made me laugh, cry and sit-up thinking about it for a week after I read it. The author takes you along on her own personal journey and as her New York City eyes and heart transform into something miraculous so does the readers'. It touches the heart and reminds us of our humanity in the most magnificent way. Read it slowly; you won't want it to end!

An engaging description of a young art registrar's journey to create, and tour America with, the Te Maori exhibit. That's the plotline. The theme is her growing into animistic way of thinking and acting, as she encounters anomalous experiences through the objects she's transporting.

Beginning with initial cultural-difference encounters in New Zealand that are both funny and infuriating, the book chronicles her slow realization that these objects are imbued with animistic life force, and how she learns to deal with them in this new way. They are not "things," they are ancestors, with their own opinions and desires that they don't hesitate to make known.

O'Biso's learning echoed other journeys towards deep indigenous understanding I've seen in Hawaii, where the stones (alive stones) taught this same way. ([...])

I found her experiences and her own internal growth in intuitive awareness poignant, beautiful, & funny; and the message of loving respect these ancestors/statues brought to be a vitally needed one in today's world.

Reading this story, I realized that I saw this very exhibition in San Francisco. And I remember walking through the rooms, & as my hair raised, whispering to my companion, "Whoa - these are *alive*!" I wondered then whether it was okay for these objects to be presented in a museum, and for us to be in their presence without ceremonial context. It's wonderful to find such experiences validated, and to learn this many years later that it was indeed okay.

I found this book impossible to put down. It was written with such love, attention to detail, and knowledge about what it takes to arrange for one of the world's priceless art collections to leave its ancestral home and travel across the world to be shown in US museums with the appropriate ceremonies included. The laughter, the tears, the wonder and yes, the magic, of this story is gripping from beginning to end. The transformation of the author in this process was as moving as the story of the collection itself as well as the strong presence of the Maori people who had much to teach by the reverence of their ancestors and the vitality of their rituals.

My mother mailed me this book from America to New Zealand because I have recently arrived in NZ and I will be living in New Zealand for the next year. I find Carol O'Bistro's insights about New Zealand culture relevent and insightful for a current long-term visitor. Her writing is lyrical and fun to read. I wonder what she is doing now.

I bought this book when I was visiting New Zealand in 1988 where people kept recommending it, and I am just now rereading it for something like the fifth time--including one time with a discussion group. This time through I am finding new delights that I must have skimmed over before. Parts of the book are naively New-Agey, but even those parts are personal and honest and fun to read. It is the story of a woman whose job takes her into the middle of an enormous cultural shift, and she manages to stay in the middle--between the world views of American bureaucracy and a traditional people's values, and somehow to walk that precarious boundary and to be receptive to the ways it changes her. It's an amazing story.

Perhaps the best book ever to explain why New Zealand is not the USA with minor differences. There are considerable cultural and societal differences which may escape the visitor unless and until they experience New Zealand on a deep level. Some find the mysterious aspects of her experience of the Maori culture to be doubtful or merely coincidence. Those born in New Zealand will understand them and will not be surprised.