Reuniting the past and present: Interview with Maia Nuku
By K. Emma Ng
Portrait of
It is not often that you see a museum curator take off her shoes at a patrons’ event, especially at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). But less than an hour after I met Maia Nuku, the museum’s associate curator for Oceanic art, she was in stockinged feet, ready to help unfold a 17-foot-long ngatu (painted barkcloth) by visiting Tongan artist Visesio Siasau. At an institution where the opportunity to see contemporary art alongside the museum’s collection—and even hear contemporary Pacific artists speak about their work—has not been a common occurrence, the evening’s inclusion of both was a quietly radical move.
