The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing

The Met’s galleries devoted to the arts of sub-Saharan Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania were inaugurated in 1982. At the time, their opening marked a radical expansion of the cultural achievements recognized by the Museum. Since then, we have witnessed a surge in transformative and expanded art historical studies on the vast areas of world art these galleries embrace. Those advances in turn sparked the recent reenvisioning of this global crossroads within the Museum.

The Met’s new Michael C. Rockefeller Wing—40,000 square feet designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture—includes the three distinct collections of the arts of Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania. Representing diverse cultural traditions from as early as 3000 BCE to the present, the collections are displayed as discrete elements in an overarching wing that is in dialogue with the Museum’s collection as a whole.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the American statesman and philanthropist Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller assembled a fine-arts survey of non-Western art traditions that included the ancient Americas as well as areas of the world not represented in the Museum's collection, notably African and Oceanic art. In 1969, it was announced that Rockefeller's collection would be transferred to The Met as a new department and wing. Opened to the public in 1982, the addition was named after Nelson Rockefeller's son, Michael C. Rockefeller, who was greatly inspired by the cultures and art of the Pacific and pursued new avenues of inquiry into artistic practice during his travels there. Among the wing's signature works are the striking Asmat sculptures he researched and collected in southwest New Guinea.

The new Arts of Africa galleries present a survey of major visual traditions developed across sub-Saharan Africa and interface with the Greek and Roman art galleries, providing an opportunity for new considerations of Africa in antiquity; the new Arts of the Ancient Americas galleries expand the scope of what is often called “Pre-Columbian art,” which is strictly defined as the arts of Latin America prior to the European invasions after 1492, to consider Indigenous traditions in the Viceregal (Colonial) period; and the new Arts of Oceania galleries include signature monumental works from New Guinea and surrounding island archipelagoes, as well as a suite of more intimate spaces that take a fresh look at the visual arts of the Pacific, exploring the long-standing relationships between communities who are deeply connected, not separated, by the ocean.

The reenvisioning of each of these suites of galleries builds on international planning workshops and consultation with local and international leaders in the arts and humanities.

1932: Nelson A. Rockefeller becomes a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1953: Museum of Indigenous Art, on West 54th Street in New York, is chartered as an educational corporation, “the first of its kind in the world.” Rockefeller and René d'Harnoncourt are principal officers.

December 1956: Museum of Indigenous Art is formally renamed Museum of Primitive Art (MPA).

1961: Nelson A. Rockefeller's son, Michael C. Rockefeller, joins the Harvard-Peabody New Guinea Expedition to the Baliem Valley in western New Guinea and makes his first collecting trip to the Asmat region. He passed away while on a second collecting trip to the Asmat later that year.

1969: The exhibition Art of Oceania, Africa, and the Americas from The Museum of Primitive Art opens at The Met to introduce the public to the Rockefeller collections. Nelson A. Rockefeller signs an agreement to transfer the MPA's collection, staff, and library to The Met.

1982: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing opens at The Met.

1991: The Met's Board of Trustees votes to rename the Department of Primitive Art the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas.

1993: The Met opens the Jan Mitchell Treasury for the display of ancient American works of art in gold.

1996: The 1991 gift of the Perls collection of art from the Court of Benin is incorporated into the Benenson Gallery for African Art at the center of highlights of the collection from Nigeria, Cameroon, and Central Africa.

2007: New Galleries for Oceanic Art open. The redesigned and reinstalled seventeen-thousand-square-foot exhibition space presents a substantially larger portion of The Met’s Oceanic collection. A new space is added at the entrance to the Africa galleries in which Ethiopian liturgical art is featured.

2015: Curators, conservators, and staff from across The Met lead The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing Strategic Planning Retreat at The Pocantico Center, Tarrytown, New York. At this meeting, plans are conceived to reimagine the presentation of the three distinct collections of arts of sub-Saharan Africa, the ancient Americas, and Oceania.

2016: WHY Architects is selected as the creative partner for the reimagination of the three distinct collections.

2019: With support from the David L. Klein, Jr. Foundation, Met curators, conservators, designers, and WHY Architecture host a Rockefeller Wing Reinstallation Planning Meeting in Mexico City. With participation of leading experts from the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the Museo del Templo Mayor, and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, this scholarly meeting focuses specifically on the reinstallation of the arts of the ancient Americas and how best to illuminate new narratives and develop richer understandings of these artistic traditions.

2020: The Rockefeller Wing Reinstallation Concept Workshop is held at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, an international planning meeting that brings together Met curators and a diverse group of fifteen scholars from across the globe to consider the ways in which this renovation will set a new standard for the presentation and understanding of these three collections.

January 2021–Spring 2022: Construction of the new wing.

May 31, 2025: The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing reopens with a public festival.