Cook isn’t mentioned in the wall texts or portrayed in the show, but his ghost is everywhere in the objects he and his men brought back to Britain. And what marvels they are. Before Cook’s voyages the peoples of the Pacific, connected with each other by epic canoe crossings that linked the Polynesians from Hawaii and Easter Island to Tahiti and New Zealand, created cultural forms that we now call art. Giant pink feathered faces of gods with mother-of-pearl eyes grimace and gurn while a club embedded with tiger shark teeth combines beauty and menace. Bowls carried by naked figures on their backs embody how Hawaiian chiefs and monarchs were feasted and respected.