{"id":174664,"date":"2025-09-28T07:37:15","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T07:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174664\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T07:37:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T07:37:15","slug":"jeffrey-gibsons-bronze-animals-take-over-the-met-facade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/174664\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Gibson\u2019s Bronze Animals Take Over The Met Facade"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a> has long been the city\u2019s most photographed museum entrance\u2014tourists taking selfies, fashionistas strutting up the staircase, brides in ballgowns on photo shoots. But this month, the stone colonnade has a new cast of characters: a hawk, a squirrel, a coyote and a deer, each rendered in 10-foot bronze and poised in the niches above the steps like they\u2019ve been waiting all along to join the party.<\/p>\n

The installation, The Animal That Therefore I Am, comes from Jeffrey Gibson, the acclaimed artist who represented the U.S. at last year\u2019s Venice Biennale. It\u2019s part of The Met\u2019s Genesis Facade Commission and marks Gibson\u2019s first foray into monumental bronze sculpture. His choice of animals isn\u2019t random; they\u2019re all species native to New York, creatures that city-dwellers encounter in parks, backyards and occasionally sprinting down Broadway. By elevating them to mythic scale, Gibson spotlights the uneasy coexistence between the metropolis and the wild.<\/p>\n

\"Jeffrey
\nPhotograph: Eugenia Burnett Tinsley\/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtJeffrey Gibson, The Animal Therefore I Am 2025 <\/p>\n

\"Jeffrey
\nPhotograph: Eugenia Burnett Tinsley\/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtJeffrey Gibson, The Animal Therefore I Am 2025 <\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED:\u00a0A record number of museumgoers attended The Met this spring<\/a><\/p>\n

Gibson, who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, is known for fusing Indigenous visual languages with contemporary abstraction. Here, he\u2019s layered the animal forms with abstract patterning that recalls beadwork and textiles. The surfaces bristle with color and texture, pulling traditional motifs into dialogue with the museum\u2019s neoclassical facade. It\u2019s a deliberate collision of histories, materials and perspectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeffrey Gibson is one of the most remarkable artists of his generation and a pioneering figure within the field of native and Indigenous art,\u201d said Max Hollein, The Met\u2019s director and CEO. \u201cThese new works are based on his signature use of unconventional materials and reimagined forms, employing them to explore often-overlooked histories and the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Breslin, curator in charge of modern and contemporary art, put it more poetically: \u201cJeffrey Gibson is an artist brilliantly attuned to the varieties of life that our world holds\u2014the human, the animal, the land itself. His art vibrates and bristles with that life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jeffrey
\nPhotograph: Eugenia Burnett Tinsley\/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtJeffrey Gibson, The Animal Therefore I Am 2025 <\/p>\n

\"Jeffrey
\nPhotograph: Eugenia Burnett Tinsley\/The Metropolitan Museum of ArtJeffrey Gibson, The Animal Therefore I Am 2025 <\/p>\n

The commission is also a reminder that New York isn\u2019t just glass towers and subway grates\u2014it\u2019s hawks circling Tompkins Square Park, deer edging into Westchester lawns, coyotes prowling Central Park<\/a> and squirrels just about everywhere. By installing them in bronze, Gibson makes them monumental, but also familiar. The Met steps now double as a reminder that the city\u2019s natural habitat doesn\u2019t stop at the park\u2019s stone walls.<\/p>\n

The sculptures will remain on view through June 9, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has long been the city\u2019s most photographed museum entrance\u2014tourists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[11480,449,458,459,64,63,11481,460,134,11482],"class_list":{"0":"post-174664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-au","13":"tag-australia","14":"tag-categories-art","15":"tag-design","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-news-art"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}