At the invitation of the Museo Etnologico 'Anima Mundi' of the Vatican Museums, Chuna McIntyre and Sean Mooney spent their Rome Prize collaboration studying the museum's holdings of Yup'ik ceremonial masks and regalia, which was collected by Jesuit Catholic missionaries to Alaska in the early 1920s. The collection was built at the request of Pope Pius XI, in preparation for the Vatican Missionary Exhibition and Jubilee of 1925, and their review coincided with both the centenary of its acquisition and the Jubilee of 2025. After having collaborated for twenty-plus years, and co-curated museum exhibitions on the subject, their Rome Prize allowed them to further document Yup'ik traditional knowledge, leading to a draft of a new publication: "A Compendium of Yup'ik Masks." While in Rome, they were able to foster relationships with other European museums with Yup'ik holdings, and are currently collaborating with them on new exhibitions in Rome, Paris, Berlin and the USA.

Sean and Chuna recently co-curated two exhibitions for the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona: Yua: Henri Matisse and the Inner Arctic Spirit, (2018); and Substance of Stars, (2022), a collaboration with four Indigenous nations (Central Yup’ik, Seneca, Akimel O’odham, and Diné/Navajo). They have also collaborated on the exhibitions Microcosmos: Details from the Carpenter Collection of Arctic Art, at the Menil Collection, Houston, 2015; and Upside Down: Arctic Realities, at the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris in 2008 (reconstructed for The Menil Collection in 2010). They appear together in several documentary films, including So Surreal: Behind the Masks (2024), by Canadian filmmakers Neil Diamond (Cree) and Joanne Robertson. 

Chuna McIntyre (Central Yup’ik) was born and raised in the native village of Eek, Alaska, along the Kuskokwim River. He is a traditional knowledge keeper, elder, visual artist and dancer, and the founder and director of Nunamta (“of Our Land”) Yup’ik Dancers, which has traveled the world sharing Alaska’s Native cultural heritage. Chuna has spent over four decades performing for Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences, working to restore Yup’ik cultural traditions and language. He was declared a National Living Treasure by the Yup’ik people in 2015. A chief consultant to the Smithsonian Institution on Yup’ik culture, Chuna is also curator of the permanent Inuit installations at the deYoung Museum, San Francisco, and is one of the foremost experts in the construction and symbolism of Yup’ik parkas and dance masks.  

Sean Mooney is Managing Director and Chief Curator for the Rock Foundation, one of the largest private collections of Indigenous arts in the world (200,000+ inventory), focused primarily on Haudenosaunee and Arctic cultures. Sean is formerly Curator of the Edmund Carpenter Collection of Arctic Art at the Menil Collection, Houston, and formerly Director of Exhibition Design at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museums. From 2000 to 2013, Sean directed SMAK Projects, a New York-based exhibitions consultancy he co-founded, that organized and produced museum exhibitions worldwide. In a museum career spanning over 35 years, Sean has produced more than 200 exhibitions globally.