At 5:32 a.m., a lone, low voice cracked the silence inside the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum, soaring right up to the institution's domed ceiling. It was the opening of the museum's reconceived Oceania gallery, and standing in attendance were dozens of indigenous delegates from all corners of the Pacific Ocean. All had gotten ready in the dark, early hours of a drizzly Thursday morning to mark the moment with a pre-dawn service, before the gallery reopens to the public after a four-year hiatus this Saturday.
As Tonawanda Seneca Nation's Jamie Jacobs sang to the crowd stood in front of the entrance to the Egyptian wing, two Māori cultural representatives then responded, their twin voices piercing the air. And then more voices joined, and then suddenly, we were on the move, weaving through the Byzantine, Medieval and European sculpture galleries in chorus, in what felt like a glorious takeover of the institution's storied marble halls.
"The calling and the echoing and the reverberation of all Pasifika tongues at once is something that you never really get to see in an institution like this," said Reuben Paterson, a New Zealand visual artist who attended the service.
The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing for the arts of Africa, Oceania, and the ancient Americas closed to the public in January 2021 to undergo a renovation and "reenvisioning." The wing first opened at the Met in 1982, after Nelson Rockefeller's personal collection, previously held at his "Museum of Primitive Art," was transferred to the museum in 1969. This portion of the museum, like similar ones, had ethical and curatorial issues: While the collection contained an enormous range of work from vastly different corners of the globe, the wing did not markedly distinguish between the various regions of origin; one Mexican academic said that when he sees indigenous art in the Met, he sees a "corporate-colonial pipeline."
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