An Exclusive Peek at the Met’s Reimagined Rockefeller Wing

With more than 1,800 works from five continents, and new scholarship, refreshed galleries present the arts of Africa, the Ancient Americas and Oceania as three distinct areas.

The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has been closed and under renovation since 2021, is not scheduled to open until May 2025. But a recent early peek at the wing’s refurbished galleries already reveals brighter, more open exhibition spaces for the museum’s storied collection of objects from Africa, the Ancient Americas and Oceania — including stone sculptures, detailed metalwork and colorful ceramic vessels.

Perhaps most strikingly, the $70 million renovation designed by WHY Architecture and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects is now presenting the three areas as distinct in their own right, rather than grouped together under the archaic rubric of “primitive,” as they were in the past.