Meet the Staff

Lexi Asnes joined the American wing in 2022. She is primarily responsible for the execution and coordination of the department’s daily administrative operations. She also performs a wide range of clerical and administrative tasks, including general office maintenance, external communications, coordinating staff travel, and supporting the department’s purchases. She received an MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh and a MA in Museum Anthropology from Columbia University.

Pavla Berghen-Wolf joined the American Wing in 2022. She is responsible for the administrative management of all internal collections processes related to acquisitions, deaccessions, loans, installations, and exhibitions. Previously, she worked for the Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné Project and Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, as well as holding internships at the Whitney Museum of American Art, BRIC Arts Media, the American Federation of Arts, and the Rose Art Museum. She received a BA in Art History, with a minor in French, from Brandeis University.

Caroline Elenowitz-Hess joined the American Wing staff in 2022. She specializes in late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century design and fashion history, with a particular focus on changing definitions of beauty and femininity. She received a BA in English Literature from Yale, an MA in Fashion Studies from Parsons, and is currently working on a PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture at Bard Graduate Center. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of Design History and Fashion Theory.

Alyce Perry Englund joined The Met in 2015, and oversees the 17th- to early 19th-century American furniture and Shaker collections. Previously, she worked at the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Historic New England (SPNEA). She received her MA from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, a BA in art history from the University of Vermont, and is an alumna of The Attingham Summer School. She has published scholarship on japanned furniture, Connecticut’s Federal era cabinetmakers, and folk art as well as organized many exhibitions, including Simple Gifts: Shaker at the Met (2016) and Chippendale’s Director: The Designs and Legacy of a Furniture Maker (2018).

Alice Frelinghuysen’s purview includes 18th- to early 20th-century ceramics and glass; furniture of the Gilded Age and Arts & Crafts Movement; and the work of Louis C. Tiffany. In addition to her permanent displays, including oversight of the 2009 Charles Engelhard Court reinstallation, she has curated exhibitions and authored publications on a wide range of topics. Her long-standing work on Tiffany has resulted in many publications, exhibitions, and lectures. She earned her BA from Princeton University, her MA at the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, and was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow before joining the Museum’s staff. She was awarded the Frederic E. Church Award for contributions to American culture in 2014.

Matt Heffernan joined the American Wing in 2022.  Previously, he served as a Collections Manager and Registrar at various museums and cultural institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, and the special collections of the New York Public Library. Matt works closely with the American Wing Curators and is responsible for the ongoing, day-to-day logistics, care, and documentation of the permanent collection. He oversees the American Wing Technicians and Collections Management Team to facilitate activities in the galleries and storerooms while pursuing best practices in collections care and preventative conservation.  Matt earned a BA in Cultural Studies from Bates College.

Medill Higgins Harvey oversees the collections of American silver, jewelry, and other metalwork, as well as mid-nineteenth-century furniture. She joined the staff of the American Wing to direct research for the exhibition Art and The Empire City (2000). She is co-author of Early American Silver in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2013) and contributed to the 2011 and 2009 reinstallations of the American silver and jewelry collections, as well as the exhibition, Silversmiths to the Nation (2007). Her current project is Collecting Inspiration: Edward C. Moore at Tiffany & Co. She holds a BA in art history from Dartmouth College and was awarded an MA in decorative art history by the Cooper-Hewitt Museum/Parsons.

Stephanie Herdrich focuses on late 19th-century American paintings and drawings. She was co-curator of the exhibition Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents (2022) and has contributed to Met exhibitions and publications about American Impressionism, American drawings, and artists Childe Hassam, George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Hart Benton, among others. An expert on the work of John Singer Sargent, she is author of Sargent: The Masterworks (2018), and other publications, and was co-curator of The Met’s presentation of Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends (2015). She has a BA in art history from Washington University in St. Louis and received a PhD and a certificate in curatorial studies from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Ronda Kasl joined the staff of the American Wing in 2013. Previously, she was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. She received her doctorate from New York University, and is a specialist in the art of Spain and Spanish America. During her 20-year career she has curated numerous exhibitions, including Giovanni Bellini and the Art of Devotion (2004) and Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World (2009). Most recently, she curated Cristóbal de Villalpando: Mexican Painter of the Baroque (2017). She is the author of The Making of Hispano-Flemish Style: Art, Commerce, and Politics in Fifteenth-Century Castile (2014). 

Catherine Mackay began in the American Wing as an intern in 2008, before joining the staff later that year. She oversees the department’s operations, as well as the administrative and collections staff. She is also responsible for the Wing’s fiscal activities, including the operating budget, donor funds, acquisitions, personnel, and gallery maintenance. She earned her BA in History, with a minor in Art History, from Fordham University and her MA in Visual Arts Administration from New York University.

James Miller joined the American Wing in 2023 as the Lois and Arthur Stainman Research Assistant, supporting collections research on American paintings and drawings. James is a Doctoral Candidate in the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania studying late-nineteenth-century decorative painting with a focus on the Aesthetic Movement in the United States. He holds a BA in Art History and Physics from Bowdoin College and, prior to The Met, held research positions at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha) oversees the American Wing’s Native American art collection. An award-winning scholar and museum leader, she previously served as Senior Executive and Assistant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian-New York and as Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry in Chicago. Her forthcoming book, Water, Bones, and Bombs examines 20th-century American Indian art and environmental disputes in northern New Mexico. She co-edited “Aesthetic Violence: Art and Indigenous Ways of Knowing,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal (2015). She earned her PhD at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Amelia Peck graduated from Brown University, and received an MS in historic preservation from Columbia University. Her areas of expertise include American textiles and period rooms. In her more than 30 years at the Museum, she has curated numerous exhibitions and installations, and has been the author or general editor of many publications, including Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (2013).

Adrienne Spinozzi joined the American Wing in 2007 and oversees the museum’s American redware, stoneware, and art pottery collections. She recently curated Shapes from out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection, an exhibition of 20th- and 21st-century ceramics. Her current project is Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, a presentation of 19th-century stoneware with a focus on the contributions of enslaved potters. She is a graduate of Hartwick College and the Bard Graduate Center in decorative arts, design history, and material culture.

Thayer Tolles joined the American Wing staff in 1992. A sculpture specialist, she served as editor and co-author of a two-volume catalogue of the Museum’s historic American sculpture collection (1999, 2001); participated in the department’s renovation and reinstallation between 2001 and 2012; and organized numerous exhibitions with accompanying catalogues, including Augustus Saint-Gaudens in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2009) and The American West in Bronze, 1850–1925 (2013). A graduate of Williams College, she received her MA from the University of Delaware and her PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Laura Wile has been with the American Wing since 2014, working primarily in the permanent-collection galleries and period rooms. She provides preventative conservation for the decorative art objects on display as well as regular gallery up-keep.

Sylvia Yount is responsible for the administrative and curatorial oversight of the American Wing. Previously, she held curatorial leadership positions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. At The Met, she has prioritized broadening the department’s collecting and programming to be more inclusive of underrepresented artists from across the continent—particularly women and people of color—and is currently overseeing a major reinstallation of the American Wing to mark its 2024 centennial. She received a PhD and a MA in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA in Italian from New York University.