This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will unveil a new suite of sculptures by acclaimed interdisciplinary artist Jeffrey Gibson (born 1972, Colorado Springs, Colorado) in the niches of its Fifth Avenue facade.
"Jeffrey Gibson is one of the most remarkable artists of his generation and a pioneering figure within the field of native and Indigenous art," said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. "These new works are based on his signature use of unconventional materials and reimagined forms to explore often overlooked histories and the natural world. We look forward to unveiling his monumental sculptures for The Met’s iconic facade.
David Breslin, Leonard A. Lauder Curator in Charge, Modern and Contemporary Art, said, "Jeffrey Gibson is an artist brilliantly attuned to the varieties of life our world holds—the human, the animal, the land itself. His art vibrates and bristles with that life, the histories that never leave us, and the futures that his vision makes possible."
Gibson's project for The Genesis Facade Commission will be the sixth in a series of commissions for the historic exterior. The artist’s new works for the niches will draw upon his longstanding and highly developed iconography, one built upon a dynamic visual language that fuses Indigenous world views and imagery with abstraction, patterning, materiality, and text.
This project is the latest in The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist's practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met's audiences.
An interdisciplinary artist who grew up in the United States, Germany, and Korea, Jeffrey Gibson’s expansive body of work ranges from hard-edged abstract paintings to a rich practice of performance and filmmaking to significant work as artist convener and curator. Since the 2000s, Gibson’s work—which often incorporates Indigenous aesthetic and material traditions—has consistently revealed new modalities for abstraction, the use of text, and color, applying his formal mastery to concepts such as human connection and collective identity. Notably, Gibson’s work has introduced a broad range of recurring sources, material elements, and imagery while offering a critique of the reductive ways in which Indigenous culture has been historically flattened and misappropriated.
Main Image: Jeffrey Gibson. Photo by Brian Barlow