Metropolitan Museum of Art opens Tapa on 2 November

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) in New York City opens Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia on 2 November 2026. The exhibition remains at the museum through 12 December 2027, giving visitors from Western Europe a new reason to include its Oceania galleries in a New York visit.

Tapa opens at the museum on 2 November

Tapa brings together 13 works from Fiji, Samoa, Futuna and Niue in Gallery 359 at the museum’s Fifth Avenue building. The exhibition is presented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and focuses on bark cloth and related works held in its collection.

The exhibition includes bark cloth panels from the nineteenth century and an exceptional hiapo on loan from Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of New Zealand. The works connect material, exchange and diplomacy across Polynesia, rather than presenting tapa only as a form of textile production. The museum lists the exhibition period as 2 November 2026 to 12 December 2027 in its exhibition announcement.

The opening sits within a wider autumn programme at the museum. A second exhibition, A Long Shadow: Postwar Japan Through the Lens, is scheduled to begin on 12 November 2026, while the museum’s calendar also lists talks, workshops and performances during November.

How Gallery 359 fits the museum’s long history

The museum was incorporated in New York on 13 April 1870 and opened to the public later that year in the Dodworth Building on Fifth Avenue. It moved to its present site at Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street on 30 March 1880, where the original structure was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould.

Gallery 359 places the Polynesian exhibition within the institution’s wider holdings of Oceanic art. The museum’s history records collections spanning Africa, Oceania, the Americas, Asia, Europe and the ancient Mediterranean, while the present building has expanded around the original nineteenth-century structure. This makes the Tapa exhibition a direct addition to a collection history that has developed since the museum’s first decades.

The museum describes its building as covering two million square feet, with tens of thousands of objects on view at any one time. Its history and the 1880 move to Fifth Avenue are documented in the museum’s history record.

New York’s Fifth Avenue site anchors the exhibition

The exhibition is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue location, not at The Met Cloisters in northern Manhattan. The main building stands at 1000 Fifth Avenue beside Central Park, while the separate Cloisters site is at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive in Fort Tryon Park.

That distinction matters for planning: Tapa is listed for Gallery 359 at the Fifth Avenue museum, whereas the Cloisters is a separate branch devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe. The two sites belong to the same institution but offer different collections and settings.

Visiting Metropolitan Museum of Art: what travellers from Western Europe should know

• Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia opens on 2 November 2026 in Gallery 359 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue building and continues through 12 December 2027.
• The exhibition is a temporary display of 13 works from Fiji, Samoa, Futuna and Niue, including bark cloth and a hiapo on loan from Te Papa Tongarewa.
• The venue is 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028, beside Central Park; the museum also operates The Met Cloisters at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive.
• The building combines the original 1880 museum structure with later additions, so the exhibition is encountered within a large, expanded complex rather than a separate pavilion.

The exhibition gives the Fifth Avenue museum a specific Polynesian focus during November 2026, alongside its permanent Oceanic art holdings and other temporary shows.

Searching for Metropolitan Museum of Art on social platforms

These links open searches for Metropolitan Museum of Art on each platform.

Frequently asked questions about Metropolitan Museum of Art

When does Tapa take place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Tapa: Art of the Gift in Polynesia opens on 2 November 2026 and runs through 12 December 2027 in Gallery 359.

Where is the Metropolitan Museum of Art and how do you get there?

The exhibition is at 1000 Fifth Avenue beside Central Park in New York City. The institution’s separate Cloisters branch is at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive in Fort Tryon Park.

What is the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

It is a New York museum incorporated in 1870 that opened at its current Fifth Avenue site in 1880, with collections spanning more than 5,000 years of art and culture.