The Metropolitan Museum of Artwork in New York has employed Oluremi C. Onabanjo as its new curator within the Division of Pictures. She’s going to start on the museum this summer time.
On the Met, Onabanjo will likely be targeted on managing the Walther Assortment, a 2025 reward of greater than 6,500 historic and modern pictures and albums that spans Africa, China, Japan, Germany, Mexico, and america, amongst different locals. Onabanjo additionally has familiarity with the Walther Assortment, having beforehand served because the director of exhibitions and collections for the gathering’s New York outpost.
As a part of her position, she’s going to curate the Met’s second exhibition devoted to the Walter Assortment, scheduled for 2028. (The museum at present has on view a smaller exhibition drawing from the reward.)
Onabanjo’s position is a newly created one that’s each targeted on the Walther reward but additionally a part of a “broader effort to construct out the Division of Pictures as we look forward to the Tang Wing for Trendy and Up to date Artwork,” in line with a Met spokesperson. Scheduled to open in 2030, the Tang Wing will present a brand new house for the Met’s everlasting assortment of contemporary and modern artwork, with images enjoying “an essential position in shaping how artwork from the late nineteenth century to the current is introduced throughout the Museum’s galleries,” per a launch.
“I’m honored to hitch The Met at such a dynamic second because it seems to be forward to the way forward for Images within the Museum,” Onabanjo stated in a press release. “The Met’s extraordinary assortment and its dedication to presenting artwork throughout cultures and time provide a strong context for rethinking the histories of images.”
Along with engaged on the Walther Assortment, Onabanjo will even be tasked with curating exhibitions extra broadly, specializing in Twentieth-century and modern images and time-based media, with a watch towards the inventive scenes in Africa and Asia. She will even produce new scholarship and make new acquisitions for the Met, in addition to collaborate with colleagues throughout the museum to include the medium in varied different exhibitions and displays, no matter which division is organizing the exhibition.
“Oluremi C. Onabanjo is among the many most compelling voices in modern images right this moment,” Met director and CEO Max Hollein stated in a press release. “Her scholarship and curatorial imaginative and prescient mirror a deep engagement with the histories of the medium and a considerate method to the methods images shapes our understanding of the world. As we glance towards the way forward for artwork at The Met—together with the event of the Tang Wing for Trendy and Up to date Artwork—Onabanjo’s perspective will likely be invaluable in advancing a extra expansive and globally linked narrative of artwork, fostering new dialogues throughout departments, cultures, and time.”
Onabanjo received’t be touring far for her new job, as she is at present a images curator on the Museum of Trendy Artwork, about 30 blocks south. Onabanjo joined MoMA in 2021 as an affiliate curator and was promoted to the title of The Peter Schub Curator in 2024. At MoMA, she organized the 2023 version of “New Images” and cocurated the 2025 iteration, in addition to organizing a solo present for Ming Smith and the museum’s present “Concepts of Africa: Portraiture and Political Creativeness” (by July 25).
For the museum’s everlasting assortment, she acquired works by Gabrielle Goliath, Aline Motta, Marilyn Nance, Silvia Rosi, Eslanda Robeson, and Zofia Rydet, and arranged sections of the gathering galleries, reminiscent of “A Little Gallery of the Photograph-Secession” and “Visible Vernaculars.”
Moreover, she served on the curatorial workforce for the 2021 Triennial of PhotographyHamburg and was the inaugural recipient of the Vilcek Basis Prize for Curatorial Work in 2025.
“Onabanjo brings a outstanding depth of information and a rigorous method to the examine of images,” Jeff Rosenheim, who leads the Met’s images division, stated in a press release. “Her work displays a nuanced understanding of the medium’s histories and its world trajectories, in addition to a powerful dedication to increasing the gathering in significant and enduring methods.”
