The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collections of the Arts of Africa, the Ancient Americas, and Oceania, returned in May 2025 in a reimagined Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. Following a multiyear renovation, the three major collections, spanning five continents and hundreds of cultures, now stand as independent entities.

Lucy Foster, Manager at D Lan Galleries New York, recently spoke to Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Curator for Oceanic Art at the Met about the new Wing and its impact.

L.F. The reopening of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing marked a significant moment not only for The Met, but for international visibility of Oceanic cultures more broadly. Standing within the newly reimagined galleries today, what feels most meaningful to you about this, and what do you hope audiences reconsider through the new presentation?

M.N. Each time I walk through the new galleries, I get a wonderful feeling of expansiveness: the airiness; the high, vaulted ceilings – they fill me with a sense of possibility, of exciting potential. I hoped we would achieve that all-important sense of uplift through the architectural design and layout. We worked closely with our architect, Kulapat [Yantrasast of WHY Architecture] to select materials that had subtle but particular resonances with Oceania, and opted for a design that has the galleries for Oceania cut diagonally through the Wing. This creates a far more dynamic flow – and means we can really guide visitors on a journey through space and time, emphasizing the connections between cultures across the entire region. The galleries for the Arts of Oceania present art from the past 500 years. Over 650 works are featured, drawn from over 140 distinct cultures in a region of astonishing diversity that covers almost one-third of the earth’s surface.

It feels important to re-present the collection with upgraded, elegant casework and frame the works in a bold, contemporary aesthetic. Design plays such a key role – conveying to visitors that they are free to approach the art, unencumbered, with fresh eyes! Much like they would if they were in a gallery of contemporary art. I think it’s helped people to drop any preconceptions they may have had, and not worry about their relative unfamiliarity with the work … freeing them up to really look!  Some visitors ask if specific works were out on display before (as they don’t recall seeing them) which makes me understand they are indeed encountering them anew. It’s a clean slate and that seems to have worked well.

Lucy Foster, D Lan Galleries New York and Dr. Maia Nuku, Curator at The Met | Photograph: Peter Zwolinski

L.F. Historically, many Indigenous works were presented through ethnographic frameworks rather than as part of broader art histories. The new Wing feels noticeably different in its tone and approach. How has institutional thinking evolved around the presentation of Indigenous cultural material, and what role did Indigenous voices and community collaboration play in shaping the galleries?

M.N. Yes, the tone and approach, and even the broader culture of the museum, have all been shifting steadily over the past few years. We were encouraged by our Director and CEO Max Hollein, to look beyond the boundaries of our own Wing and open up creative, more intentional, dialogues between our collections and the art presented in adjacent galleries. This has led, as you say, to broader connectivity (historic, geographic, and thematic) across the Museum; allowing for narratives that extend beyond the local to a far broader, more global set of art histories. Reaching further, to be more expansive – that’s been the goal.

The centering of Indigenous voices played a huge role in this shift. We planned for a substantial phase (18 months) of consultation early on in the project, reaching out to leading Indigenous and First Nations Australian and Pacific artists, scholars and practitioners. Our collaborators and project advisors were generous in sharing appropriate songs and stories, offering specific insights and anecdotes that give you a wonderful glimpse into the rich archive of customary knowledge that they are responsible for. Their insights provide richer, more vivid contexts for understanding the art on display. This content was edited by our Digital department into a range of new digital and audio features that animate the galleries with local, indigenous voices to present exciting, contemporary perspectives – their voices really bring things to life! and help our visitors unlock clues to clarify deeper meaning, from insider viewpoints.

L.F. One of the most powerful aspects of the reopening is the emphasis on continuity, presenting these cultures as living, evolving, and contemporary rather than historical. How do you hope this shifts public understanding of Indigenous cultural production today?

M.N. As you know in your own work, it’s critical for us to present the art in all the glory of its dynamic, living context. We wanted the space to feel generative, and full of potential. You will notice many of the major, iconic works in the collection (including, of course, some of the large-scale, monumental works) are displayed out in the open, not encased in vitrines. This is significant because it underscores the importance of letting the works respond to their surrounds, so they live and breathe in the space, creating the inner ecology, if you will, of the gallery. Just beyond the perimeter wall of the gallery is Central Park, and that visibility through the threshold of the galleries creates a strong sense of the relationship with the natural environment, and life going on outside.

The arts of Australia and the Pacific regions remain largely unfamiliar to a huge swathe of our visitors. We wanted to diminish that distance with a more evocative tone of writing and worked with our editorial team on gallery texts and labels that would center Indigenous perspectives, highlighting quotes and the biographies of named artists, to help bring the collections closer to the individual men and women who carved, wove, and painted these items; who made and used them. We focused our efforts on acquiring a transformative set of contemporary paintings and woven and beaded fiber works by senior female artists from Australia and New Guinea which have single-handedly broadened the scope of the collection, filling gaps, and asserting the strong living dynamic of customary practice that is thriving today.

Lucy Foster, D Lan Galleries New York and Dr. Maia Nuku, Curator at The Met | Photograph: Peter Zwolinski

L.F. The reopening of Michael C. Rockefeller Wing arrives at a moment of growing international recognition for Australian First Nations art through major institutional exhibitions in increasing global visibility. From your perspective, how is Australian First Nations art reshaping broader conversation within contemporary art internationally? 

M.N. We are thrilled to have a new, dedicated space for contemporary Aboriginal art and will be featuring a range of works on rotation in what we hope will be an important platform for Australian First Nations art on the international stage. This is art that needs to be seen and known about! Indigenous First Nations art is distinctive and I see that acknowledged and reflected in the tremendous upsurge in interest that we are currently witnessing. The art is so connected with life – not siphoned off from it –which is refreshing in a global contemporary art market. I think it’s the aesthetic and cosmological depth that international audiences are responding to in such a major way. This is art that speaks to us about our potential for kinship with ancestors; for lives grounded in more collective endeavours (as opposed to the individualism that is ruining us). This is art that acknowledges the age and wisdom of the planetary systems we are part of; and encourages a welcome humility in us, when faced with the scaled-up implications of a future that we are competing, rather than working, with. Indigenous art practice from Australia and the Pacific not only recalibrates the shortcomings of an art historical canon from which it has long been excluded, it offers us a protocol for living: How to live well. How to live responsibly. It offers direction … and new answers … and is already forging a path forward. The art is confident, and self-assured. “We’re on our way”, it seems to say. “Are you coming?” We need that right now.

Lucy Foster, D Lan Galleries New York and Dr. Maia Nuku, Curator at The Met | Photograph: Peter Zwolinski

L.F. Looking ahead, what do you hope the long-term legacy of the reimagined Rockefeller Wing will be? Both for Indigenous communities and for future generations encountering Oceanic and First Nations art for the first time?

M.N. It’s important to remember that we are building on a legacy established over half a century ago. My own work comes in the wake of a generation of pioneering curators who strove to push out the parameters and constraints of the existing cannon back in the 1950s and 60s, when art from Oceania had no visibility as art (but tended to be confined to natural history museums and ethnography collections). They believed it deserved to be seen as art and advocated for its inclusion. When plans for constructing a new Wing were first announced, Douglas Newton (former Oceania curator, and first Chair of our Department) had the foresight and vision to travel to the Sepik River region of Papua New Guinea in 1971-3, and commission over 180 contemporary paintings from Kwoma artists – who paint their clan designs on sago palm petioles – so he could share the modernity of their practice back in a city built on a sea of islands called New York. He was not constrained by ideas of what art should be. He wanted to show it as it was in many parts of the world, a mode of expression so tied up in the flow of life (birth and death) that it often didn’t even need a name to describe it.

I look forward to a time when the work of artists and curators in our field is less defined by the need to reframe a corrective (where the goal is less about filling the gaps; or wrapped up in a need to convince it is as good) and can simply operate in its own aesthetic orbit. I think we are perhaps establishing that: our own categories; our own criteria of value. This I think is more powerful. Our artists are fully leading in this space internationally. They don’t need permission. I hope our galleries can be a perfect forum for these important global dialogues – a test ground, or incubator in current vernacular – where Indigenous and First Nations Australian artists can get the kind of visibility they deserve, in the rich context and landscape of a museum that elevates 5,000 years of art from around the world. I think we can all play our part in manifesting that vision, for all our futures.