The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
We warmly welcome The Metropolitan Museum of Art into the WanBel network. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, known as The Met, stands as one of the world’s most significant institutions for art and culture, encompassing over 5,000 years of global creativity within its collections and galleries. As articulated in a recent institutional statement, “Every day, art comes alive in the Museum’s galleries and through its exhibitions and events, revealing both new ideas and unexpected connections across time and across cultures”.
A hallmark of The Met’s commitment to cross-cultural understanding is the newly reimagined Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, reopened in May 2025, which brings together the arts of Africa, the Ancient Americas, and Oceania. This transformative renovation, a product of years of collaborative planning with artists, scholars, and Indigenous communities, reflects The Met’s profound commitment to, and deep expertise in, caring for and expanding understandings of the works in the Museum’s collection. Together with our collaborative and community-based approach to curating these collections, the transformation of these galleries allows us to further advance the appreciation and contextualization of many of the world’s most significant cultures
With an extensive collection and 305 selected objects from PNG on display, The Met showcases masterpieces spanning ancient to contemporary Pacific artistry, such as the striking Massim canoe prow ornament, munkuris charms, the evocative kulap figures from Namatanai, and the prehistoric pestle finial from the Komun River region.
Their long-standing dialogue with source communities continues today with the re-created Kwoma Ceremonial House Ceiling, redesigned with consultation from Kwoma artist descendants through The Mariwai Project
An innovative feature, placed directly under the Kwoma Ceiling, affords visitors important biographical and contextual information relating to the original commission of paintings by Kwoma artists in Mariwai Village in the Washkuk Hills of PNG (1971–73). Visitors can access information in digital format in three sections that explain details of the original commission by curator Douglas Newton, the first chair of the department that oversees the collections held within The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing; photographs of a selection of named artists alongside their paintings; and an explanation of favoured iconography and motifs. Dynamic footage from the opening ceremonies of a new ceremonial house built in 2016 in Mariwai Village (which is named “Tokimba” and twinned with The Met’s Kwoma Ceiling in New York) round out the offerings of this digital feature, which is produced by The Met’s Digital Department using archival photographs from the Visual Resource Archive housed in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing’s department library. The consultation with descendants of the original Kwoma artists in Mariwai Village and recent drone and film footage was overseen by The Mariwai project who partnered with The Met on this project.
https://www.metmuseum.org/press-releases/mcrw_oceania-2025-news
