Longtime Met Museum curator Julie Jones retiring

NEW YORK – Julie Jones, an eminent curator and scholar of the art of the ancient Americas, will retire at the end of March following 21 years as head of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, including the past six years as Andrall E. Pearson Curator in Charge. Her tenure at the Museum began in 1975. She will become Curator Emeritus as of April 1, said Thomas P. Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Campbell announced further that Alisa LaGamma, a curator in the department, who is a specialist in African art, will become Curator in Charge of the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas on April 1. She was elected to the new position at the Jan. 8 meeting of the museum’s board of trustees.

“Julie Jones was one of the first curators of pre-Columbian art to work at an art museum in the United States,” said Campbell in making the announcement. “Over the past nearly four decades at the Met, her contributions to the field have been significant—from the exhibitions she organized to the catalogs and essays she authored, the gallery renovations and reinstallations she supervised, and the range and coordination of work by the team of curators she led.”

He commented further: “I look forward to working with Alisa LaGamma in her new role as head of the department, succeeding Julie Jones. Over her 16 years to date at the Met, Alisa has made a major contribution to the advancement of public understanding of Africa’s cultural heritage. She has demonstrated superb scholarship and leadership abilities through her numerous exhibitions and her work on various curatorial committees.”

Jones began her career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1975 as a curator of pre-Columbian art. She was promoted to curator and acting department head in 1990, and became curator in charge of the department in 1992.

A curator in the Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas since 1996, Alisa LaGamma is responsible for the Metropolitan Museum’s holdings of African art.

LaGamma was born in Lubumbashi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and spent formative years in the Ivory Coast, Togo, Senegal, Nigeria, and South Africa as the daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service officer. She received her undergraduate degree in art history from the University of Virginia and her M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University.

Upon completion of her doctorate, LaGamma worked on the reinstallation of the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of African art in 1996 and has overseen the continual updating of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing’s African galleries since then. She has also been responsible for the acquisition of scores of works of African art.