Professor Nicholas Thomas

Nicholas Thomas is currently on sabbatical. Sarah-Jane Harknett is Interim Director.

Nicholas Thomas has been Director of the Museum since 2006. He is author or editor of nearly fifty influential books and exhibition catalogues, which have ranged widely over art in Oceania, European travel, colonial histories, museology and the history of collections. His books have included Entangled Objects (1991), which influentially contributed to a revival of material culture studies, Possessions: Indigenous Art/Colonial Culture (1999), a comparative postcolonial art history of Australia and New Zealand, Islanders: the Pacific in the age of empire (2012), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize, and Gauguin and Polynesia (2024), which offers a fresh view on the artist. Nicholas Thomas has also written extensively about contemporary art, museums and related issues for the Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, Apollo, Artlink and Art Asia Pacific among other magazines and journals.

'Oceania', which he co-curated with Peter Brunt for the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris in 2018-19 was acclaimed as landmark exhibition by critics across major newspapers in the UK, France, Germany and the United States, as well as in Pacific nations themselves. Thomas has curated or co-curated many other exhibitions at MAA and elsewhere, often in collaboration with contemporary artists.