The Met's First-Ever Facade Commission, Wangechi Mutu: The NewOnes, will free Us, on View Beginning Today, Monday, September 9

Wangechi Mutu, 2019. Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Photo by Eileen Travell

Preview for The Facade Commission: Wangechi Mutu, The NewOnes, will free Us

When:
Monday, September 9, 10 am–noon

Where:
The Met Fifth Avenue, Facade

Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu has been selected to create sculptures for The Met's Fifth Avenue facade niches—the first-ever such installation on the Museum's historic exterior—inaugurating a new annual artist commission series.

Born in Nairobi in 1972 and trained in sculpture at Yale, from which she received her MFA in 2000, Wangechi Mutu is one of the most distinguished artists of her generation. She has achieved critical acclaim for her haunting, otherworldly collage—paintings, art-films, live performances, and sculptures. Comprised of either bronze or organic materials, Mutu's three-dimensional work depicts formidable figures referencing modern and classical mythologies that conflate histories and sculptural traditions of Africa and Europe. Like her collage-paintings, Mutu's sculptures reflect critically on social and ecological injustices and inequalities. Female transformation and empowerment are at the core of all her ideas and evidence in the completed work.

Exhibition Overview