Yaëlle Biro

Yaëlle Biro is Associate Curator for African Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A specialist of the reception of African arts during the first decades of the 20th century, Yaëlle Biro earned her Ph.D. in 2010 from the Sorbonne in Paris and was awarded the dissertation prize of the Musée du Quai Branly for that work. At the Met since 2007, she has collaborated on numerous African art exhibitions, from Reconfiguring an African Icon: Odes to the Mask by Modern and Contemporary Artists from Three Continents (2010), to The Nelson A. Rockefeller Vision: In Pursuit of the Best in the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas (2013), and the recent Warriors and Mothers: Epic Mbembe Art (2014). Her exhibition African Art, New York, and the Avant-Garde was awarded the 2012 Outstanding Small Exhibition Prize by the AAMC (Association of American Museum Curators). She is responsible for the two exhibitions of African photography currently on view at the Met: In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa (curated with Dr. Giulia Paoletti, on view until January 2016), and The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa (curated with Dr. Evelyn Owen, on view until March 2016).