José María Yazpik is an acclaimed actor, writer, director, and producer with a distinguished career in film, television, and theater. Born in Mexico City and raised along the U.S.-Mexico border, he has been recognized for his performances in internationally acclaimed films and series, including Narcos: Mexico, The Obscure Spring, and Amantes Pasajeros. He won the Ariel Award for Las Vueltas del Citrillo and received multiple nominations for his directorial debut, Polvo. In addition to his work in cinema, he collaborated with The Met on the Ancient Americas audio guide for the newly renovated Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

Formerly director of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, Dr. Magaloni is currently Deputy Director, Program Director, and Curator of the Art of the Ancient Americas, and Director of the Conservation Center at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. A specialist in mural and manuscript painting of the pre-Hispanic and colonial periods, she has published extensively on cultural understandings of color and the persistence of the ancient in modern art.

Born in Mexico City, Laura Filloy Nadal joined the staff of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing in 2022. Her current projects include the renovation of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, where she reenvisioned the ancient Americas galleries for local and international audiences. She co-curated the exhibition The Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art (2022-2023). Previously, she was a senior conservator and researcher at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, where she studied the cultural biography of objects—how they were made and used, and, what they mean. She holds a BA from Mexico’s National School of Conservation, Restoration, and Museography, and earned her MA and PhD in archaeology at the University of Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne.

David Carballo is Professor of Archaeology, Anthropology, and Latin American Studies at Boston University. Dr. Caballo is a specialist in Mesoamerican archaeology, particularly the pre-Hispanic civilizations of central Mexico. His ongoing projects at the ancient city of Teotihuacan include the Proyecto Arqueológico Tlajinga, Teotihuacan (PATT), and the Proyecto Plaza de las Columnas.

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Archaeology at Yale University. His research interests include Mesoamerican art, religion, and writing, as well as the study of ancient urbanism and social complexity with a special focus on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. Dr. Chinchilla Mazariegos has conducted extensive field research, particularly at the ancient city of Cotzumalhuapa, where he conducts a long-term field research project. In 2011, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for his work on Cotzumalhuapa art and archaeology.

Patricia J. Sarro (Ph.D. Columbia University) is Professor Emerita of Art History at Youngstown State University. Her research and publications focus on the Ancient American cities of Teotihuacan and El Tajín, and the arts of the Mesoamerican ballgame. Since 2016, she has contributed her expertise to the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Met as a researcher, writer, and consultant.

Manuel Aguilar-Moreno is a Professor of Art History at California State University, Los Angeles. He specializes in pre-Columbian civilizations, the colonial history of Mexico, and Mexican muralism. Dr. Aguilar-Moreno has published on a wide range of subjects, including Mesoamerican art and history with an emphasis on the Aztecs and the Amerindian-Christian art of the sixteenth-century transculturation period. He has also published on funerary art and the Mesoamerican ballgame.

Orlando Hernández Ying is the Lapis Curator of the Arts of the Americas at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Previously, he was a Curatorial Associate, National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, and Rockefeller Curatorial Fellow at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York. A native of Panama, Dr. Hernández Ying was the head curator of the Museo Antropológico Reina Torres de Araúz and held the position of National Coordinator of Museums in Panama, where he developed a country-wide master plan for 18 museums.

Francisco Corrales Ulloa is an archaeologist with the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica, specializing in the southeastern and southern Caribbean regions of Costa Rica. Dr. Corrales Ulloa has published extensively on southern Diquis societies, emphasizing the archaeological contexts of ancient stone sculptures. Other scholarly interests include Formative societies, southern Central America chiefdoms, history and practice of Costa Rican archaeology, and museum studies.

Lawrence Waldron is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Queens College of the City University of New York. Dr. Waldron’s research focuses on the art of ancient communities in the Caribbean. His most recent book, Pre-Columbian Art of the Caribbean, surveys the ancient art of the region and its ties with ancient Venezuela. Previously, he published a book on the meaning of ancient symbols from the Lesser Antilles.

Florencio Delgado Espinoza is a Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Sociocultural Research Center at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. His research and teaching areas include Ecuadorian Anthropology, Coastal Anthropology, Ecuadorian Archaeology, Andean Archaeology, and Amazonian Anthropology. Dr. Delgado Espinoza has coauthored a book on the historical ecology of the Galápagos Islands and has published numerous scientific articles on Ecuadorian archaeology.

A specialist in the art and archaeology of the ancient Americas, Joanne Pillsbury (PhD, Columbia University) was previously associate director of the Getty Research Institute and director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. She has published widely, including Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, 1530–1900; Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award recipient Ancient Maya Art at Dumbarton Oaks; and Association for Latin American Art Book Award winner Past Presented: Archaeological Illustration and the Ancient Americas. Her 2017 exhibition catalogue Golden Kingdoms: Luxury Arts in the Ancient Americas won the PROSE Award for Excellence. She served as co-curator of recent exhibitions Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art (2023) and Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art (2024).

Leonardo López Luján is a Mexican archaeologist and director of the Proyecto Templo Mayor, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). He has served as a visiting professor at the Sorbonne, the Università di Roma, the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín of Guatemala. He has been also a guest researcher at Princeton University, the Musée du quai Branly, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Institut d'études avancées de Paris. Dr. López Luján received the Social Sciences Award by the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Hugo C. Ikehara-Tsukayama, a Peruvian archaeologist, is the Harris Family Curator of the Arts of the Americas at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University. Between 2021 and 2024, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Research Associate at The Met, where he was part of the curatorial team working on renovating the galleries for the arts of the ancient Americas. Prior to The Met, he curated and co-curated several exhibitions for the Museo Central-BCRP in Peru.

Benjamin Alberti is Professor of Anthropology, Sociology & Criminology at Framingham State University, Massachussets. Dr. Alberti has published widely on gender and the artwork of Bronze Age Knossos, ceramics of northwest Argentina, and the Archaic rock art of northern New Mexico. His research incorporates a variety of topics, prominently queer theory, feminism, studies of masculinity, ontology, and social theory.

Brus Rubio Churay is a Murui-Bora painter who creates abstract scenes of Murui-Bora myths, local stories, and songs. Many of Rubio Churay’s paintings depict the increasing pressure on traditional ways of life, disrupting families and endangering the passing down of ancestral knowledge. Rubio Churay’s work has been shown in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lima, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, La Maison de L'Amérique Latiné in Paris, and the Triennale di Milano, among others.

Gabriel Prieto is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida. Dr. Prieto’s primary research interest is the study of ancient maritime adaptations on the North Coast of Peru. Prieto’s research is also devoted to a long-term and multidisciplinary project focused on ritualized human violence in ancient times. He is currently investigating how late pre-Hispanic sociopolitical organizations reacted during climatic crises such as El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, social organization, population mobility, and the manipulation of ritual violence for political, ideological, and economic purposes.

Luisa Vetter Parodi is a lecturer at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the Universidad de Lima. Dr. Vetter Parodi is a specialist in ancient and colonial Andean metallurgy and the author of several publications in this field. She was the Director General of Museums in the Ministry of Culture of Peru and the head of the General Archives of the Nation.

Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech is an art historian specializing in ancient Andean metallurgy and has curated several exhibitions in Peru, Sweden, and Italy. Dr. Carcedo de Mufarech is currently an associate professor at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Lima. She has taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and has served in the Ministry of Culture of Peru, Municipalidad Metropolitana de Lima, and the National Library of Peru.

Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez is an Indigenous Quechua weaver from Chinchero in the Cusco region of Peru. Along with other Quechua weavers from Chinchero as well as international supporters, she helped to establish the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco (CTTC - Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco) in 1996 as a nonprofit organization. Since then until the present day, Callañaupa has served as director of the CTTC. She has written four books on Peruvian weaving and has coauthored a third on senior weavers of the Peruvian Andes.

Arabel Fernández López is a Peruvian conservator and scholar of ancient Andean textiles. Fernández López was a Fellow in Conservation and Scientific Research at The Met for two years (2018-2020). She has been a member of numerous archaeological projects, including the multiyear initiative at Huaca Cao Viejo, where she also participated in setting up the site museum.