The symposium is also part of a series of gatherings aimed at rethinking global art histories through the expansive and intellectual space of the Wereldmuseum, which challenges the structures and assumptions of both art history and anthropology through new approaches to material culture. The title of these gatherings ‘blazing forms’, taken from Margaret Danner’s poem The Convert, that initially applied to the blazing power of African art and material culture is here applied to Oceania to become Oceanic Blazing Forms: Memory, Place-making and Imagination.