Dr. Maia Nuku
Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art, was born in London and is of English and Maori (Ngai Tai) descent. Her doctoral research focused on early missionary collections of Polynesian gods and their extraordinary materiality, which sparked an interest in drawing out the often eclipsed cosmological aspects of Oceanic art. She followed up her involvement on the major exhibition Pacific Encounters: Art and Divinity in Polynesia 1760–1860 (2006) at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, with postdoctoral research at Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology as part of a research team exploring Oceanic collections in major European institutions—Artefacts of Encounter: 1765–1840 and Pacific Presences: Oceanic Art in European Museums.
