The Metropolitan Museum of Art has hired Maria Castro as an associate curator in its modern and contemporary department, which is growing ahead of the opening of the Tang Wing in 2030. She will begin in her role later this month.“This is an incredibly active phase for the department, as we plan and implement the renovation of the Oscar L. and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing. I’m delighted that Maria will be joining the Museum as we undertake this important work and continue to build a world-class collection,” Met director Max Hollein said in a statement.Castro comes to the Met from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She joined in 2018 as an assistant curator and was promoted to associate curator of painting and sculpture in 2024. She is currently cocurating an exhibition centered around one of SFMOMA’s most iconic works, Henri Matisse’s Femme au chapeau (1905), which will open next May.At SFMOMA, Castro also co-organized the museum’s current permanent collection hang, “1900 to Now: SFMOMA’s Collection.” She also curated a presentation of Amalia Mesa-Bains’s Venus Envy, Chapter I: The First Holy Communion Moments Before the End (1993/2022), which the museum had recently acquired, and co-organized the 2023 exhibition “Sitting on Chrome: Mario Ayala, rafa esparza, and Guadalupe Rosales”and the 2021 show “Pan American Unity: A Mural by Diego Rivera.”Prior to SFMOMA, she served as the Leonard A. Lauder Predoctoral Research Fellow in Modern Art, which was established after late collector Leonard Lauder donated 78 Cubist masterpieces to the Met and established a research center. She previously interned at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and received her PhD in art history from the University of Pittsburgh. Her research typically focuses on connecting various 20th-century modernisms from across the Americas to Europe.“I’m elated that Maria will be joining The Met at such a crucial time,” David Breslin, curator in charge of department of modern and contemporary art, said in a statement. “Maria is a thoughtful, creative, and diligent curator and scholar specializing in late 19th- and 20th-century Latin American art, with particular emphasis on modernism across the Americas and connections to Europe.”At the Met, Castro will work with the modern and contemporary department’s curatorial team to “reimagine, contextualize, and grow its presentations of art from 1890 to 1950,” according to a release.In a statement, Castro said, “I am thrilled to be joining The Met, notably at this historic moment as the Museum looks ahead to the forthcoming Tang Wing. I look forward to reimagining the presentation of modern and contemporary art in this context, and within the broader context of The Met’s incredible collection.”