Public Programs @ The Institute
Series: Roundtables
Weaving Histories into Futures: Art – People – Place
Monday, April 27, 2026, 6:00pm
Speakers: Maia Nuku, and Dare Turner
In this roundtable, Curator Maia Nuk will share insights into a ten-year project that involved the complete overhaul and construction of new galleries for the Arts of Oceania in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her presentation will trace how the galleries were reframed conceptually, how they now emphasize connectivity in the context of global and local histories, and how the redesign elevates the equally critical arts of storytelling, oratory, and performance alongside Oceania's dynamic visual arts. In this new framing, the galleries offer different perspectives on Oceanic art to both local and international visitors in ways that reach deep into the region's past while also centering its ongoing agency in the present. Curator Dare Turner will then offer comments on Dr. Nuku's presentation and project, opening the floor to a discussion on the role and relevancy of museums in the twenty-first century with regard to Indigenous arts. Are they living, expansive archives of Indigenous knowledge? Or outdated relics of colonial pasts? Join us for a lively evening as we explore how local curators and museums in New York City are reframing Indigenous arts across the globe and how their histories continue to weave together the future.
The moderator for the roundtable will be Anthony Meyer, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Arts of the Americas at the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU.
Maia Nuku, born of English and Māori (Ngai Tai) descent, is Curator for the Arts of Oceania at Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Maia’s doctoral research focused on 18th century collections of Polynesian art, and she completed two collaborative post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Cambridge in England (2008-2014) researching Oceanic art collections alongside Pacific artists and practitioners. At the Met, Maia has evolved a curatorial approach that centers indigenous Pacific perspectives, grounding the presentation of visual arts in the unique conceptual and cosmological connections that make art from Oceania so compelling. Her exhibition The Shape of Time: Art and Ancestors of Oceania travelled to Museum of Art Pudong in Shanghai (June 1 - Aug 20, 2023) and National Museum of Qatar in Doha (Oct 23, 2023 - Jan 15, 2024). Maia has just overseen a major reinstallation of the Oceania galleries at the Met which showcase the creativity of indigenous Pacific artists from the 18th century to the present through the lenses of global history, indigenous storytelling, Pacific oratory and performance.
Dare Turner is the Curator of Indigenous Art at the Brooklyn Museum and a member of the Yurok Tribe. In 2024, she co-organized Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum at the Baltimore Museum of Art, which included nine exhibitions, interpretative interventions across the Museum, and a catalogue. At the Brooklyn Museum, she curated Nico Williams: Aaniin, I See Your Light and co-curated Towards Joy: New Frameworks for American Art, a radical reinstallation of the American Wing guided by Indigenous ways of knowing and Black feminist theory. Her forthcoming exhibition, Hopi Kachina Dolls: Blessings for a Balanced World, will debut at the Brooklyn Museum in October 2026.
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