LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Museum of Art branched into the South Pacific and beyond with the acquisition of an encyclopedic collection of sculptures and artifacts from Polynesia, Melanesia and other Oceanic cultures, museum officials said yesterday.

The 46-piece collection of Oceanic art, purchased by museum trustees, includes an 18th-century Hawaiian drum collected by Capt. James Cook in 1778 and a 100-year-old dance paddle of sculpted wood from Easter Island, LACMA chief executive Michael Govan said.

"It's really a very comprehensive collection in terms of representation across the Pacific islands," Govan said. "Each one is a masterpiece."

The collection was acquired from the foundation of Michigan cabinetry company Masco Corp. Masco culled the items in the early 1990s from the collection of a former Australian government officer who began assembling Oceanic art in the 1950s while serving in Papua New Guinea, said Michael Kan, who picked out the artworks for the foundation as a curator at the Detroit Institute of Art.

Govan would not reveal the purchase price, but it was partly funded with a $5 million challenge grant from a foundation started by real estate developer Eli Broad and his wife. Other LACMA trustees funded the balance. If the Broads' donation represented half the purchase price — a typical arrangement for a challenge grant — the $10 million price tag would be a bargain, Kan said. He said it would be nearly impossible to assemble such a collection from scratch.

"It's doubtful even if you had unlimited funds that you could put it together again," he said.

LACMA plans to begin exhibiting the collection next year — placed among the modern art collection to illustrate the influence of Oceanic art on Dada and other modern art movements, Govan said.