About The Met/ Collection Areas/ Oceanic Art in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing/ Meet the Staff: Oceanic Art

Meet the Staff: Oceanic Art

Headshot of Christine Giuntini

Christine Giuntini

Conservator

Christine Giuntini is responsible for textile and organic artifact conservation in the department. She has created or refined the mounting and exhibition techniques for flat and complex artifacts in more than thirty Museum exhibitions. Her research focuses on the study of materials and methods of manufacture of African and Indonesian ethnographic textiles; archaeological feather works and fabrics from South America; and composite works from Africa, Oceania, and the New World. She has contributed to the Museum's publications, including technical essays for The Essential Art of African Textiles: Design without End, (2008) and Peruvian Featherworks: Art of the Precolumbian Era.

Headshot of Alisa LaGamma

Alisa LaGamma

Curator in Charge of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

Born in Lubumbashi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Alisa LaGamma spent her formative years in sub-Saharan Africa. Graduate studies in African art history at Columbia University led her to undertake research in southern Gabon on the living tradition of Punu masks that culminated in her 1995 dissertation “The Art of the Punu Mukudj Masquerade: Portrait of an Equatorial Society.” A curator at the Metropolitan since 1996, her exhibition projects devoted to topics ranging from authorship to portraiture have sought to anchor African art historically and conceptually. In 2010 she was a fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership and in 2012 the Bard Graduate Center recognized her work with the Iris Award for Outstanding Scholarship.

Selected Publications

LaGamma, Alisa. Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2007).

———. Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, Iconic Sculptures (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2011).

———. Kongo: Power and Majesty (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2015).

———. Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2020).

———. "Silenced Mbembe Muses." Metropolitan Museum Journal 48 (2013): 143–160.

Damien Marzocchi Departmental Technician

Damien Marzocchi

Departmental Technician
Headshot of Matt Noiseux

Matthew Noiseux

Senior Administrator

Matthew Noiseux began his career at the Museum working as part of the staff of the Department of Greek and Roman Art on the reinstallation of the Greek and Roman galleries, which opened in April 2007. He joined the staff of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas in 2013. He holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MS from Columbia University.

Headshot of Maia Nuku wearing a black shirt and black rectangular glasses

Maia Nuku

Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Curator for Oceanic Art

Maia Nuku was born in London and is of English and Maori (Ngai Tai) descent. Maia's doctoral research focused on eighteenth century collections of Polynesian art and she completed two post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge University (2008–2014) as part of an international research team exploring Oceanic collections in major European institutions. Her first exhibition at The Met On Country: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan-Levi Gift (2017) focused on the ways in which ancestral connections are expressed in contemporary Aboriginal art. Her most recent exhibition, Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesian Art (2018–2019) centered indigenous Pacific perspectives to explore the close material and genealogical networks that bind Polynesian gods and chiefs with Nature.

Selected Publications

  • Nuku, Maia. "Knowledge positions in Aotearoa and Turtle Island Art Museums: Interview with First Nations curators Kathleen Ash-Milby, Maia Nuku and Nigel Borell" in Artlink Issue 40:2 (June 2020). 
  • ———. "Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesia." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 76, no. 3 (Winter 2019). 
  • ———. and Adams, Julie, Steven Hooper. "Gods, ancestors, feathers and bones in central Polynesia." In A'a: A Deity from Polynesia, 49–59. London: British Museum Press, 2016.
  • Raychelle Osnato

    Collections Specialist

    Raychelle Osnato joined the department in 2020 to implement and construct new storage housing for the collection during the renovation of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. She received her BA in Art Conservation and Art History at the University of Delaware in 2019. She was previously a conservation assistant at the RISD Museum where she treated Samurai artifacts, ceramics, and decorative art objects for exhibitions including, Raid the Icebox Now and Daimyo Culture in Peacetime. She has past experience in paintings conservation at Winterthur Museum and archaeological conservation of mosaics with the Centro di Conservazione Archeologica (CCA) in Italy.

    Headshot of Lauren Posada

    Lauren Posada

    Assistant Conservator

    Lauren Posada joined the department in the fall of 2019 as a preventive conservator during the renovation and reinstallation of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. With a specialization in textiles, she previously worked as a conservator at the Museum at FIT focusing on the treatment, care, and exhibition of their historic costume collection. Lauren received her Master of Arts in fashion and textile studies with a concentration in conservation and collections care from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and a BFA from Pratt Institute.

    Headshot of David Rhoads

    David Rhoads

    Senior Collections Manager

    David Rhoads is responsible for the proper care and display of the department's collection. He joined the Museum in 2015, after having previously held the position of associate preparator at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. He received his BFA in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2010.

    Headshot of Doris Zhao

    Doris Zhao

    Project Manager

    Doris Zhao joined the department in 2018 to undertake research relating to the renovation and reinstallation of The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing. She was previously the curatorial assistant at The Studio Museum in Harlem, where she organized exhibitions including Harlem Postcards: Wish You Were Here; Regarding the Figure; and Surface Area: Selections from the Permanent Collection. In addition, she was the co-curator of a curious blindness at The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Gallery and has contributed essays to various publications, including Prospect 5: The Lotus in Spite of the Swamp; Fictions; and Black Refractions: Highlights from The Studio Museum in Harlem.