Rockefeller Wing

Talk story about the new Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum, which writer visited last week. It is a 42,000-square-foot addition to the south side of the museum, which is filled with a staggering collection of masks, statues, pottery, jewelry, textiles, ornamented canoes, household implements, and architectural elements from Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands. Writer was given a tour by Douglas Newton, the chairman of the Department of Primitive Art. Mr. Newton explains how the term "Primitive" is a misnomer of sorts--many of the societies represented were highly structured, with very complex customs and beliefs. The wing contains the collections of Nelson Rockefeller and a number of other people. The outermost gallery, which has a 50-foot ceiling and a sloping glass wall looking south on Central Park, provides a dramatic setting for some enormous wooden drums and statues that were collected by Michael Rockefeller, Nelson's son, shortly before he disappeared in New Guinea. Writer describes her tour, in which she saw, among other things: a group of 16th-century Benin bronzes, a large Peruvian wall hanging made of blue and yellow feathers, a painted ceiling from the Kwoma culture, of northeast New Guinea. Mr. Newton tells how he commissioned the ceiling for the museum from the Kwoma, and describes some of the things he would like to see added to the collection.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com