{"id":1857468,"date":"2026-03-31T13:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1857468"},"modified":"2026-03-31T13:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T10:15:00","slug":"patricia-marroquin-norby-the-mets-first-native-american-curator-quietly-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1857468","title":{"rendered":"Patricia Marroquin Norby, the Met’s First Native American Curator, Quietly Left"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/norby.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n\tPatricia Marroquin Norby, the first curator of Native American art ever hired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, quietly left her post in December 2025. Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York posted a job listing for a curator of Native American art to replace Norby, who had been the museum\u2019s associate curator of Native American art since 2020.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNorby had been hired to great fanfare, as both the first person to hold the role at the Met and the first Native American to be hired as a curator by the institution. Her appointment was seen as both a watershed and as a response to criticism from various Native American tribes, who pointed to the museum\u2019s poor documentation for many of the thousands of Native artworks and cultural objects it owns, some of which are on display in the recently opened Rockefeller Wing.<\/p>\n

\n\tNorby\u2019s departure was much quieter. She left the Met in December; Norby and a Met spokesperson both cited health reasons as the cause of her departure.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince Norby was hired in 2020, her claims of Native heritage have been contested, including by the tribes she was affiliated with. Over the years, she has claimed ancestry to the Nde, Apache, and Eastern Apache peoples, who live in the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico, and the Pur\u00e9pecha, who live in Michoac\u00e1n, Mexico. During her five-year tenure at the Met, she claimed only Pur\u00e9pecha as her Indigenous heritage.<\/p>\n

\n\tOrganizations, groups, and individuals that investigate false claims of Indigenous heritage in the US and Canada have made their work increasingly public over the past decade. A report published by the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds (TAAF) in 2024 said that Norby has \u201czero American Indian ancestry.\u201d TAAF, responding to whistleblower reports, led an independent genealogical investigation that produced hundreds of documents tracing Norby\u2019s family lineage, comprising US Indian census rolls and Mexican Indigenous identity requirements. For the Pur\u00e9pecha, community kinship is the main requirement, while the Mexican government stipulates linguistic fluency in order to claim such an identity.<\/p>\n

\n\tDays after the Met job was posted, Norby published an op-ed in the Minnesota Star Tribune<\/em> defending her identity as a private matter, setting her argument against the backdrop of the ongoing ICE raids nationwide and the University of Minnesota\u2019s \u201cHolding Our Ground: Voices and Strategies Against Self Indigenization\u201d symposium. \u201cIdentities are personal,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIf questioned, it is an issue to be resolved privately with their family and with the community that claims them or with whom they identify.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNorby\u2019s framing filters Indigenous identity through the lens of self-identification, but the majority of Indigenous tribes in both the US and Mexico prioritize community kinship, or an active relationship with the tribe one claims. \u201cTribal belonging exists through collectivity, not individuality,\u201d Joseph Pierce (Cherokee Nation Citizen), an associate professor and the founding director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative at Stony Brook University, told ARTnews<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the Met\u2019s Native American art curator can legally be held by a non-Native person, Norby\u2019s appointment made it seem as though it would be implicitly reserved for a Native curator. Norby\u2019s departure raises a broader question, given the publicity surrounding her joining the museum used her identity as partial evidence of her qualifications for the job: What was the Met\u2019s process for validating Norby\u2019s ties to Native communities?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe answer remains opaque. The Met did not respond to multiple ARTnews<\/em> queries as to whether a formal process existed to vet Norby\u2019s claims of Indigeneity or if one has been established since. In a statement, the Met simply said, \u201cAs with all curatorial roles, candidates are evaluated through a rigorous search process that considers scholarly expertise, professional experience, and the ability to work collaboratively and respectfully with communities whose cultural heritage is represented in the Museum\u2019s collections.\u201d Citing federal and state law, a Met spokesperson pointed to the job listing\u2019s equal opportunity statement, which reads in part that candidates are hired without regard to \u201crace, color, \u2026 [or] ancestry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Met\u2019s statement continued, \u201cThe Metropolitan Museum of Art is committed to the thoughtful stewardship and presentation of Native American art, while working collaboratively and respectfully with Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities. Through ongoing consultation with culturally affiliated communities, Tribal leaders, artists, scholars, and cultural practitioners, the Museum seeks to ensure that the care, research, and interpretation of Native American works in its collection reflect their cultural significance and living traditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"5<\/div>\n<\/div>
View of the esxhibition \u201cMary Sully: Native Modern,\u201d 2024 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.<\/span>Photo Paul Lachauer. \u00a9 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tIn its statement, the Met also highlighted some of Norby\u2019s contributions during her tenure, which included focusing research and compliance as well as building community collaboration for the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) and cowriting the Native American Arts Initiative (NAAI), \u201ca strategic plan and guide for centralizing the proper care, presentation, and acquisition of Native American art, the first resource of its kind at The Met.\u201d She also organized exhibitions on George Morrison and Mary Sully, as well as a group exhibition, titled \u201cWater Memories,\u201d featuring 40 works from historical, modern, and contemporary Indigenous artists in the Met\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement relayed by the Met, Norby did not address the controversy related to her claims of Indigenous identity or her recently published op-ed, attributing her departure solely to her health. \u201cIn early 2025, I was diagnosed with two chronic illnesses that require full-time management,\u201d she said. \u201cMy years at The Met were some of the most rewarding and challenging of my career. I am deeply proud of what we accomplished regarding exhibitions, NAGPRA protocols, and working collaboratively with Native American Nations and Indigenous communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPierce sees the stakes of a hiring like Norby\u2019s and the hype around it as more than just an institutional concern. \u201cIf you say you\u2019re Native American to a Native American artist, and they tell you something about their art, they\u2019re telling you something with an understanding that you share an experience,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you haven\u2019t actually established trust with that person. You\u2019ve actually established deceit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe gray area Norby appears to exploit lies between the Mexican and US Indigenous groups she claims. \u201cIndigenous\u201d is a global concept; \u201cNative American\u201d is not. In the US, Native identity is tied to political belonging\u2014membership in sovereign Tribal nations\u2014not a broad racial category. By contrast, Indigenous identity in Mexico operates differently within its national context, which has prized the concept of mestizaje, or the mixing of Indigenous with Spanish and African heritage, above all else since the Mexican Revolution. Indigenous communities in Mexico, however, continue to be marginalized to this day.<\/p>\n

\n\tThese distinctions matter legally, politically, and socially, Pierce said, noting that Norby\u2019s shifting identities ultimately betrays a disconnection from living Native communities. He characterized ambiguity around one\u2019s Indigenous identity as \u201ca red flag\u2026 a kind of vagueness about the political affiliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNorby\u2019s op-ed prompted a response from writer Jacqueline Keeler (Din\u00e9\/Dakota), who invoked the term \u201cpretendian\u201d\u2014a portmanteau of \u201cpretend\u201d and \u201cIndian\u201d\u2014used for non-Natives claiming Native heritage for personal or professional gain. \u201c[Norby] argues that because ICE is violent, we should not question whether a former curator at the Met is who she claims to be,\u201d Keeler wrote. \u201cThis is a classic \u2018settler move to innocence.\u2019 It implies that looking into the background of a well-paid academic is somehow the same as the violence at the border.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFalse claims of identity are not limited to the art world, as several high-profile ones have rocked academia. The University of California system launched a \u201cfact-finding mission\u201d on the topic last year after several of its campuses have seen \u201cpretendian\u201d allegations surface, including at UC Berkeley and UCLA.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut opportunities for curatorial positions held by Indigenous people are even more limited than in academia. Beside the Met role, only a handful of Native curators hold curatorial roles at prominent institutions, including Dakota Hoska (Ogl\u00e1la Lak\u021f\u00f3ta) inaugural curator of Native American art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Kathleen Ash-Milby (Din\u00e9), senior curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum; Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa\/Tonga), curator of Indigenous art at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, Arkansas; and Jami Powell (Osage), associate director for curatorial affairs and curator of Indigenous art at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College.<\/p>\n

\n\tJeremy Dennis (Shinnecock), a visual artist and curator, sees this as a \u201ccomplex dilemma\u201d for mainstream museums: \u201cdo you ask for a tribal ID every time you work with a Native American artist or curator, or do you simply rely on reputation\u2014a question that becomes even trickier when a candidate is a descendant.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPierce put it more succinctly, \u201cIf someone is claiming [Indigenous identity] as part of their credentials, the Indigenous people and the public have a right to understand what that means.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/patricia-marroquin-norby-met-museum-curator-departure-1234779468\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/norby.jpg?w=1024″] Patricia Marroquin Norby, the first curator of Native American art ever hired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, quietly left her post in December 2025. Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York posted a job listing for a curator of Native American art to replace Norby, who had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1857468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1857468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1857468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1857468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1857468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}