New York is about to receive a very special gift. On November 2, 2026, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia, an exhibition in Gallery 359 celebrating the breathtaking bark cloth of the Pacific, on view through December 12, 2027.
Tapa is cloth with a story in every line. Made almost exclusively by collectives of Polynesian women, it begins as the soft inner bark of the paper mulberry tree, pounded and felted into large sheets, then decorated with bold geometric designs. Before imported cloth arrived, tapa was Polynesia’s only textile, used for garments, wraps for sacred objects and, most importantly, enormous ceremonial textiles exchanged as gifts at marriages, funerals and moments of diplomacy.
The Met’s show brings together 19th-century tapa from Fiji, Samoa and Futuna, plus a Niuean hiapo on loan from Te Papa in New Zealand, and it brings the tradition into the present with a contemporary painting by Niuean artist John Puhiatau Pule, whose work shows how those grid-like patterns still shape art today.
It is a quiet, gorgeous exhibition about generosity itself: in Polynesia, to give cloth is to give honor. Now that gift is on offer to everyone in New York, free with museum admission.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
