Oceanic Art in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing Team

Jessi has an arts background and has been working at the Met since 2010.

Sylvia Cockburn is a curator and art historian with research focus in contemporary Pacific art, community engagement and collaborative practice in museums. Born in Canberra, Australia, Sylvia joined the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing in 2022 as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow. She holds an MA and a PhD from the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, where her research focused on collaborations between contemporary Pacific artists and ethnographic museums in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the United Kingdom. She has previously held curatorial roles working with Pacific collections at Queensland Museum in Brisbane and Museums Victoria, Melbourne. Before coming to The Met, she worked as Curator of Art at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. 

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 (2012).

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.

Damien has worked at the Museum for over a decade, with roles throughout. He joined the Rockefeller wing shortly before commencement of the renovation in January 2020.

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.

Curator Maia Nuku was born in London and is of English and Maori (Ngai Tai) descent. Her doctoral research focused on early missionary collections of Polynesian gods and their extraordinary materiality, which sparked an interest in drawing out the often eclipsed cosmological aspects of Oceanic art. She followed up her involvement on the major exhibition Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760–1860 (2006) at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts with postdoctoral research at Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, where she served as part of a research team exploring Oceanic collections in major European institutions—Artefacts of Encounter: 1765–1840 and Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art in European Museums.

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.

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.

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.

Lydia Shaw joined the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing in 2024. She contributes to the general administration of the department, helps coordinate the Friends of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, and assists in planning the events leading up to the reopening of the MCRW galleries. Previously, she was Administrative Assistant to the Deputy Director and Director of Finance and Administration at the Morgan Library & Museum, where she coordinated the institution’s re-accreditation with the American Alliance of Museums and its strategic planning process. She holds a BA in English Literature and American Studies from Franklin & Marshall College.

Paige oversees the digital administration of the MCRW collections areas through the TMS database.

Doris Zhao joined the department in 2018 to work closely with the curatorial and collections teams on 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 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. She holds an MA from Columbia University.