Alayna Wiley is the designer, curator and craftsperson behind ANIMATE OBJECTS. Having worked both in marketing as a Creative Producer and in education at both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, she is at the helm of material culture and creative production.

Alayna Wiley has a Master’s in Art Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art where she built the blueprint for Anima Initiative, a residency fostering design dialogs with pre-consumer waste. She also holds a degree in Visual Art and Anthropology from Oberlin College where she began her the research into the nature of ethnoaesthetics. She continued her independent studies at Harvard, where produced documentary film, and spent time additionally at the Art Institute of Chicago at Oxbow, pursuing craft materials research.

In order to learn traditional crafts from master artisans, Alayna has traveled to South Asia, Europe, and Latin America. She studied washoku utsuwa, the ‘intimate harmony’ of food and dishes with Takashi Nakazato, a Japanese 13th generation potter. In Mallorca, Alayna learned about Ikat, a textile dyeing method, from Catalan family-owned weaving productions, Teixits Riera and TeixitsVicens. In Teotihuacán del Valle, she studied Zapotec weavingand natural dyeing with the Porfirio Gutiérrez family. Alayna is based in New York, where she studied Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing ceramics with urushi lacquer and gold powder, under Gen Saratani.

She has held teaching positions at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the past seven years as well as The Museum of Arts and Design for the past two. She’s realized public programming at The Met at AfroPunk, as well as led tours for The Costume Institute’s Met Gala exhibitions. In 2020, She founded METROPOLITAN MAKERS, an art education school bringing kids to museums from home .

In addition, Alayna teaches ceramics extensively across Brooklyn. You can take her classes at Gasworks and Artshack Brooklyn. Prior to her work at The Met, Alayna worked as a client manager at abc carpet & home, advising celebrity cliente on interior design, lighting, and furniture.

In 2018, Alayna ran an art auction gala sponsored by Phillipps to provide art therapy and services for children affected by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. Her exhibition POSSESSION & CREATION : The Ethnoaesthetic Origins of Textiles was fully sponsored by ChaShaMa in May, 2018. Alayna is also the founder of 3B International Creator Space, which provides housing and studio space in New York for international artists working toward the betterment of humanity through craft.