Modern and Contemporary Art Team

Lee Berman joined The Met in 2023 as a Collections Specialist, Object Storage as part of the Tang Wing renovation. Previously to joining The Met, Lee spent several years freelance art handling at Columbia’s Wallach Art Gallery, The Grolier Club, Asia Society, NYPL and other institutions. From 2015 to 2020, he was the Manager Of Exhibition Installation at The Museum Of The City Of New York. Prior to that, from 2008 to 2015, he served as the gallery manager for the Davison Art Center and Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University. A practicing artist, Lee earned his BS in Fine Art/Printmaking from the University Of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

David Breslin joined The Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at a pivotal moment as it began planning and implementing the renovation of the Oscar L. and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art. Before his arrival at The Met in 2022, he was the Whitney Museum of American Art’s DeMartini Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, helping to develop new programs, including an Indigenous Artists Working Group. As a curator, he has worked on shows such as “An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections From the Whitney’s Collection, 1940-2017” and “David Wojnarowicz: History Keeps Me Awake at Night.” He recently was the co-curator for the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It's Kept. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard.

Michaela Bubier joined The Met in 2022 and is responsible for managing the department’s friends group, The Modern Circle, and the Visiting Committee. Previously, she served as the Associate Director of Events at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston where she led public and community partner programs, development events, and major museum fundraisers from 2017-2022. She holds a BA in Arts Administration with a concentration in in Arts Management, Anthropology, and Painting from the University of Virginia.

Catherine Burns joined The Met in 2015. She is primarily responsible for coordinating acquisitions for the department. She also works closely with the curators and collections management staff on departmental loans and special exhibitions. A former Fulbright Fellow, she holds a BA in art history and German from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a master’s certificate in museum collections management and care from the George Washington University. Prior to joining The Met, she worked for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as well as the Morgan Library and Museum.

Iria Candela joined the department in 2014. Previously, she was Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, London, where she co-organized exhibitions such as Malevich (2014), Mira Schendel (2013), Gabriel Orozco (2011), and Van Doesburg and the International Avant-Garde (2010). Candela received her PhD from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and MA from Columbia University. At The Met, she curated the retrospectives Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms (2017) and Lucio Fontana. On the Threshold (2019), as well as the exhibition Julio Le Parc 1959 (2018). In addition, she organized Marisol: Self-Portrait Looking at the Last Supper (2014), and the 2020 Roof Garden Commission Héctor Zamora: Lattice Detour.

Lionel Carré who joined The Met in 2015, is responsible for the installation and care of the Modern Collection and maintenance of the gallery. Prior to joining the department, Lionel worked as an Art Handler with The Met’s Art Rigging Department, assisting in the installation of large-scale art projects and transporting crated art works. Lionel is a practicing artist and studied Studio Art at Queens College.

Mary Chan joined The Met in 2005, originally in the Department of European Paintings, with the primary responsibility of cataloguing nineteenth- and early twentieth-century paintings. She has worked in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art since 2012, overseeing the research and documentation of the permanent collection for The Met online collection. Prior to The Met, she worked in the Department of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She holds a BA in art history from Vassar College and an MA from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

Clare Davies has contributed to a wide range of research, programming, and archival projects related to art and photography in the Middle East since serving as associate curator of the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo between 2004 and 2006. She completed her doctoral dissertation on Egyptian modern art at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and was subsequently awarded the inaugural Irmgard Coninx Prize Fellowship at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. She is the co-author of Robert Morris, Object Sculpture: 1960–65 (Yale UP, 2014) and has published regularly on contemporary art from the Arab world.

Alongside her role in Modern and Contemporary Art, Stephanie D’Alessandro (Ph.D Chicago) was the Curator in Charge of the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art from 2017-2021. Before joining the Met in 2017, D’Alessandro was the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of International Modern Art. She has organized such major exhibitions as Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917 (2010), Picasso and Chicago (2013), Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary, 1926-1938 (2014), Tarsila do Amaral: Inventing Modern Art in Brazil (2017), as well Surrealism Beyond Borders (2021-22). Her many publications include topics on German and Latin American modernism, Surrealism, and artists such as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

© 2017, photo by Brooke Hummer Photography

Seth Fogelman joined the museum in 2024 to work on the Tang Wing project. Seth has over two decades of experience in registration and exhibitions management, having worked previously at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Jewish Museum. Early in his career he was an assistant in the Met’s Thomas J. Watson Library. He holds a BA in the History of Art from Cornell University and an MA in Art History from Hunter College.

Jordan Frank joined The Met in 2024 as a Collections Management Associate and is returning to the institution after interning in the Registrar’s Department during the Spring of 2023. Her main project focuses on compiling documentation and sources showcasing provenance, exhibition history, and publication history for 220 works of art by the artist Philip Guston that were recently gifted to the museum. She received her BA in Fine Arts and Art History from the George Washington University in 2019, and her MA in Art History and Museum Studies from SUNY Purchase in 2022. While at Purchase, she worked at the Neuberger as the museum’s Research Fellow and helped conceptualize/curate the exhibition Corpus Ex Machina in the Neuberger’s Open Classroom gallery.

Destinee Filmore joined the department in 2023. Previously, she worked as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), and before then worked in the Folk & Self-Taught Art department at the High Museum of Art as a Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellow. Her exhibitions at WCMA included Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation (2024), Remixing the Hall: WCMA’s Collection in Perpetual Transition (2022 - 2024), and Frantz Zéphirin: Selected Works (2022). Destinee holds a BA from Spelman College (2021) and an MA from the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art (2023).

Margaret Gaines is a Collections Manager, Registrar in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art

McClain Groff joined the department in 2023. Previously, she held curatorial positions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). She received her BA from Vassar College (2017) and her MA from Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art (2022).

Zach Hewitt started at the Met in 2011 as a Security Officer. In 2022 he joined the Modern and Contemporary department. He is an practicing illustrator and artist with a BFA from Hartford Art School.

Olivia joined the department in 2021. In this role, she oversees the day-to-day coordination of the Leonard A. Lauder Chairman’s office. Before joining the department, she previously held positions at Alexandre Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, Queens Museum, and here at The Met in the Visitor Experience department. She received a BA in Art History from American University in 2017 and a MA in Museum Studies from New York University in 2020.

Remy Kneski joined The Met’s Modern and Contemporary Tang Wing renovation project in 2024 as a Collections Specialist, Registrar. Before joining the department, Remy was an Account Manager at Maquette Fine Art Services, working with clients to coordinate storage, logistics, packing, crating and installation of art. Prior to this Remy worked on two other collection relocation projects at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia as an Assistant Registrar on the Packing Team and at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, TN on the Conservation Team. Remy received her BA in Art Conservation and Anthropology from the University of Delaware in 2016.

Brinda Kumar is an assistant curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

Cynthia Iavarone is responsible for the care and organization of the department’s permanent collection. In her current role, she facilitates all activities related to the galleries of The Met’s Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, as well as storage, in-house installations, and outgoing loans. She also manages the department’s technicians and collections management associates. Cynthia received her BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and MFA from Columbia University.

Alejandro Leal-Pulido first joined The Met as a Modern and Contemporary Art intern in 2021 and has worked in the department since March 2022. He supports the acquisitions process and other aspects of collections management, including imaging and rights and reproductions. He holds a BA in Art History from Hunter College and a MA in Museum Studies from the School of Professional Studies at the Graduate Center. Prior to joining The Met, he worked at the Museum of Arts and Design.

Lesley Ma joined The Met in 2022 and focuses on modern and contemporary East and Southeast Asian art. From 2013 to 2022, as the founding Curator, Ink Art at M+, Hong Kong, her projects included the exhibitions Individuals, Networks, Expressions and M+ Commission: Tong Yang-Tze for the museum opening, The Weight of Lightness: Ink Art at M+, and M+ Live Art. She was also co-editor of M+ Collections: Highlights. At Para Site in Hong Kong, she co-curated The Great Crescent: Art and Agitation in the 1960s—Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan which toured to Tokyo and Mexico City. A project director at Cai Guo-Qiang’s studio in New York 2005-2009, Ma received a BA from Harvard University, MA from NYU, and PhD from the University of California, San Diego, with a dissertation focusing on postwar abstract painting in Taiwan.

Denise, who joined The Met in January 2020, received her PhD in art history from Columbia University in 2014. She was previously the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Research Scholar at the Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University (2014–2019), where she was the curator of the exhibition Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today (October 2018–February 2019) and a co-curator of its expansion at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Le modèle noir de Gericault à Matisse (March–July 2019). Denise previously received an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and worked in finance and consulting. She has taught art history at Columbia University in New York and in Paris.

Jane Panetta is an Aaron I. Fleischman Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art

Skye Prosper began her academic career at SUNY Oswego, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Relations/Business Administration. With a strong interest in art, she then went on to further her education at the Pratt Institute where she studied Arts & Cultural Management, earning a Master of Professional Studies degree. In 2022, Skye started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a Visitor Experience Ambassador, providing an individualized and quality experience to those who visited the MET. Skye went on to become a Gallery Manager at Aicon Contemporary, overseeing and organizing their art exhibitions. In the Fall of 2023, Skye rejoined the MET, becoming the Associate for Administration for Modern & Contemporary Art.

Jane Pierce joined the department in 2022 to work closely with the curatorial team as they develop the concept and plans for the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing. In this role, her research focuses primarily on the permanent collection and its evolution over the past century. Previously, she worked at The Museum of Modern Art as the Carl Jacobs Foundation Research Assistant in the Department of Photography. There she contributed research to various exhibitions and installations, and has had her research published on MoMA’s online Magazine and in Harvard Art Museums' Index magazine. She has her BA in Art Studies from The Corcoran College of Art + Design and her MA in Art History with an Advanced Certificate in Curatorial Studies from Hunter College.

Chelsea Reil joined The Met in 2024 as a Collections Specialist for the Tang Wing renovation. Before joining The Met, Chelsea worked at Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library as the archivist on the Obama Presidency Oral History Project. She has worked as Registrar at the New York Transit Museum and as an archivist as the Queens College Special Collections and Archives, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Chelsea has a B.A. in Journalism and Spanish from Northeastern University, and a Master of Library Science with a concentration in Archives from Queens College.

Mallory Roark joined the department in 2019, where she primarily supports the research and documentation of the department’s permanent collection. Prior to joining The Met’s Modern and Contemporary staff, she interned in the Department of Drawings and Prints from 2018 to 2019 and previously held positions at Sean Kelly Gallery and College Art Association. She holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College (2013) and an MA from New York University's Institute of Fine Arts (2019).

Prior to joining The Met in 2018, Lauren Rosati held curatorial positions at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The National Academy Museum, and Exit Art. She has contributed to a wide range of projects and exhibitions, including Oliver Beer: Vessel Orchestra (2019) at The Met Breuer, which she co-organized. Her lectures and publications focus on the interdisciplinary study of modernism, in particular the relation of modern art to sound, performance, media, science, and technology. Rosati holds a PhD from the City University of New York, Graduate Center.

Robert, born in St. Louis, holds a BFA in Printmaking, which laid the foundation for his distinguished career in the art world. His professional experience spans several prestigious galleries and museums in both New York and St. Louis, where he has contributed to numerous exhibitions and art projects.

CJ Salapare joined the department in 2024. Previously, he was a curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he worked on the exhibitions Edges of Ailey (2024), Every Ocean Hughes: Alive Side (2023), Whitney Biennial: Quiet As It’s Kept (2022), and My Barbarian (2021). He also worked at the Hammer Museum, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, MOCA, and the Getty Research Institute. His research—spanning art of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, art historical method, and interdisciplinary practices—has been published at Artists Space, FAR-NEAR, the Hammer Museum, the 2024 Venice Biennale, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Salapare holds M.Phils. in art history and arts education from the University of Cambridge, and a BA in art history from Williams College.

Brooks Shaver is a Supervising Technician in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art

Molly Shea joined the Met in 2024 as a Collections Specialist, Registrar for the Tang Wing renovation. Molly has held registrar and collections manager positions at the Bruce Museum, Judd Foundation, James Cohan, Sotheby’s, and Henrique Faria Fine Art. She has a bachelor's degree in Art History from Smith College, a master's degree in Visual Culture from NYU and holds a George Washington University graduate certificate in Museum Collections Management and Care.

Tuesday Smillie joined The Met in 2023 as a Collections Specialist, Registrar as part of the Tang Wing renovation. Prior to The Met, Smillie worked as Registrar for Print Center New York where she managed all things related to the safety and location tracking of artwork, on site, in storage, and in transit. She spent formative years working as a studio assistant and installation specialist at Wangechi Mutu Studio. Smillie received her BFA from Oregon College of Art & Craft and holds an MA in Museum Studies from City College of New York.

Abraham Thomas is the Daniel Brodsky curator of modern architecture, design and decorative arts at The Met.

Akili Tommasino joined The Met in 2021. Previously, he held curatorial positions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A former Fulbright Fellow at the Centre Pompidou, he is a PhD candidate at Harvard University, where he earned his MA and BA.

Katy Uravitch joined The Met in 2015 as the Project Manager for The Met Breuer. While there she oversaw all forty-eight Exhibitions. She is currently managing the Modern and Contemporary Art Department's operations, including exhibitions and rotations, budget, collection, administration, and capital projects. She supervises all aspects of the administrative and support staff and is also responsible for departmental fiscal activities, including the operating budget, donor funds, acquisitions, human resources, and gallery maintenance. Prior to The Met, she worked at The Rubin Museum of Art, New York and The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.

Nalani Williams joined the department in 2022.They earned an MFA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University and a BFA in Sculpture with a minor in museum studies from the State University College at Buffalo.

Sabine Rewald has organized many exhibitions, including Max Beckmann in New York (2016), Humor and Fantasy: The Berggruen Paul Klee Collection (2016), Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations (2013), Rooms with a View: The Open Window in Nineteenth-Century Art (2011), Glitter and Doom: Germany Portraits of the 1920s (2006), Max Ernst: A Retrospective (2005), and Caspar David Friedrich: Moonwatchers (2001). She has authored several collection catalogues, including Twentieth-Century Modern Masters: The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection and The American Matisse: The Dealer, His Artists, His Collection: The Pierre and Maria-Gaetana Matisse Collection. She was a curator from 1984–2021 and is now curator emerita. She holds a PhD from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.