Met Curator Alisa LaGamma on Wing Rebuild and Nigeria Returns
The curator who led the rebuild of the African art galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is explaining how the museum decides what stays on display and what goes home.
Alisa LaGamma, a curator at the Met, speaks to collector and writer Adam Lindemann in an interview listed by Artnet as “Met Curator Alisa LaGamma on Repatriation, the Revitalized Rockefeller Wing, the Benin Bronzes, and More”.
The conversation centres on the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, the Met’s home for the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. The transformed wing reopened to the public on 31 May 2025, after a renovation overseen by LaGamma, according to the Met. The museum marked the moment with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, as recorded in its reopening statement.
LaGamma stayed with the project after opening night. She leads a tour celebrating the renovation and reopening of the Arts of Africa galleries in the wing, published on 14 August 2025. She also co-authored a 2025 Met Bulletin on the reopening with David Pullins and Mamadou Diouf.
Repatriation, the return of cultural objects to their country or community of origin, is the other thread. The Met has said its own research led to the return of two Benin works to Nigeria. That points back to a 2021 transfer in which the museum returned three works of art to the Nigerian National Collections. Two were 16th-century brass plaques created at the Court of Benin, according to the museum’s 2021 announcement.
Provenance, the documented chain of ownership, sits behind that kind of decision. It means checking labels, old lot numbers, dealer files and museum records before a work goes on view.
What makes this stand out for visitors is straightforward. The same curator shaping the gallery is also involved in the checks that decide what belongs there. The shelves look different. The reasons are on the record too.
The interview pulls those two jobs together in one place. For anyone heading to Fifth Avenue, it is a practical guide to what changed upstairs and why some cases are empty, altered or newly explained.
