Wan Bel: Papua New Guinea and The Box
8 July 2026
The Box is partnering with organisations across the globe to mark Papua New Guinea’s 50th anniversary of independence. A new display in the 100 Journeys gallery replicates the country’s national emblem using items from the collection: a taxidermy bird-of-paradise, a spear, and a characteristic kundu drum. Together these objects form an emblem that represents the country’s unique wildlife and rich cultural heritage.
The new display in our 100 Journeys gallery is part of WanBel: a global PNG exhibition, a collaborative network uniting nearly 40 international museums and a central digital platform. WanBel means ‘one belly’, signifying community spirit through shared collections. People in Papua New Guinea (PNG) are taking steps to reconnect with cultural treasures held in hundreds of collections across the Global North.
PNG is an island nation located between Indonesia and Australia, comprising a mainland and around 160 inhabited islands. People have lived there for more than 40,000 years. PNG’s culture is hugely diverse, with more than 800 languages spoken today. European traders began arriving in the 1600s. By the 1880s, the territory was under German and British colonial rule, then after the First World War it was administered by Australia, until finally gaining independence in 1975.
British imperial expansion was often accompanied by missionary work, alongside economic and military control. More than 10,000 missionaries were stationed across the British Empire. In many contexts, efforts to convert Indigenous populations to Christianity and impose Western moral values disrupted existing belief systems and ways of life. Missionaries and others acquired Indigenous artefacts by confiscation and purchase as well as gifting and salvage. These exchanges were rarely equitable, as the balance of power was always unequal. As a direct result of missionary influence, the vast majority of Papua New Guineans now identify as Christian.
The huge ships’ figureheads displayed at The Box are not just spectacular pieces of folk-art. The ships they belonged to made journeys that changed the world. HMS Basilisk played a pivotal role in British territorial claims in PNG during the 1870s. The ship’s captain renamed PNG’s capital city after his father, Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby. It is still called Port Moresby today.
Over a hundred thousand cultural treasures from PNG are now held in museums and private collections across Europe and North America. Many were brought back to the Britain by Christian missionaries in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Nearly 600 of these are in The Box collection, over 400 of which were purchased by the Plymouth City Museum & Art Gallery in the early 1900s from The Reverend Henry (Harry) Moore Dauncey, a Protestant missionary for the London Missionary Society.
Dauncey lived and worked in PNG (then British New Guinea) for 40 years, based in the village of Delana. He returned to the UK with hundreds of artefacts now housed in museums in Cambridge, London, Oxford and Copenhagen, Denmark as well as Plymouth. His photographs local life are housed at the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI) in London, while his correspondence, reports and photo albums are housed with the Council for World Mission’s archives in London. Collections like these are now a vital resource for Papua New Guineans rediscovering the history and heritage taken from them during colonial times. The Wan Bel project takes a step in this direction.
Tabitha Cadbury
Curator, World Cultures