The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Curator of Architecture

Appointed after a year-long search as the first curator of contemporary and modern architecture and design at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This role includes programming exhibitions and events as the museum and its new annex ‘Met Breuer’ on Madison Avenue.

Exhibitions curated during my five year tenure include Wolfgang Tillmans’ Book for Architects, the annual Roof Garden Commission by Cornelia Parker in 2016 and, Adrián Villar Rojas: The Theater of Disappearance in 2017. I was responsible for the development of a collection of architecture for the museum, augmenting its existing design and decorative arts collection. The conference ‘A Year of Architecture in a Day’ was one of the most successful public programs in the history of the museum.

But it would be difficult to construe the incongruous mass of strange and inventive work Galilee had shown as a singular unity. Rather, if anything, their unity is held only by a shared punctuation – and the most tenuous one at that – the question mark. Here, it is added not to disguise an assertion as a query, or to rebel for the sake of rebellion, but rather to push against limiting confines and unambiguous thinking. In turn, the role of Galilee, and those like her, should be to champion and elevate the uncertain and the incongruous – and those who advocate for it – in order to undiscipline the discipline and allow architecture to grow.
Nicholas Brody, Archinect