Sophia Merkin
Sophia Merkin is a PhD candidate specializing in Oceanic art history at Columbia University. Her dissertation entitled “Collecting tapa: Indigeneity, gender, and colonial exchange in late 19th-century Polynesia” identifies Indigenous agency and feminine enterprise in histories of Anglo-American collecting in the Pacific. Sophia is the 2023-2024 J. Clawson Mills scholar at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has previously received fellowships from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Columbia University Media Center for Art History. She holds a BA, MA, and MPhil from Columbia University and an MA with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London. Prior to entering the doctoral program in 2016, she worked as a Curatorial Assistant at the Museum of Arts and Design and a Research Assistant in the Department of Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas at Sotheby’s.