Maia Nuku was born in London and is of English and Maori (Ngai Tai) descent. Maia’s doctoral research focused on eighteenth century collections of Polynesian art and she completed two post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge University (2008–2014) as part of an international research team exploring Oceanic collections in major European institutions. Her first exhibition at The Met On Country: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan-Levi Gift (2017) focused on the ways in which ancestral connections are expressed in contemporary Aboriginal art. Her most recent exhibition, Atea: Nature and Divinity in Polynesian Art (2018–2019) centered indigenous Pacific perspectives to explore the close material and genealogical networks that bind Polynesian gods and chiefs with Nature.