Culture
See also: Music of Tahiti and ArioiTahitian cultures included an oral tradition that involved the mythology of various gods, such as 'Oro and beliefs, as well as ancient traditions such as tattooing and navigation. The annual Heivā Festival in July is a celebration of traditional culture, dance, music and sports including a long distance race between the islands of French Polynesia, in modern outrigger canoes (va'a).
Situated in Tahiti is the Paul Gauguin Museum, dedicated to the life and works of French artist Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) who painted famous works such as Two Tahitian Women, Tahitian Women on the Beach and Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?.
Located at Punaauia is the Musée de Tahiti et des Îles (Museum of Tahiti and the Island). It is an ethnographic museum that was founded in 1974 to conserve and restore Polynesian artifacts and cultural practices.
The Robert Wan Pearl Museum is the world's only museum dedicated to pearls. The Papeete Market also sells local arts and crafts.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Tahiti
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the happy marriage. We have been taught to accept the myth not as an heroic ideal, something good, brave, and nearly impossible to fulfil, but as the very fibre of normal life. Given most families and most marriages, the belief seems admirable but foolhardy.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Popular culture is seductive; high culture is imperious.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)