{"id":138231,"date":"2025-10-22T12:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/138231\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T12:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T12:12:16","slug":"met-museum-reveals-artist-for-2026-facade-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/138231\/","title":{"rendered":"Met Museum Reveals Artist for 2026 Facade Commission\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Chinese artist Liu Wei will create four large-scale sculptures for its Fifth Avenue facade, debuting in fall 2026 through June of the following year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The commission is part of the New York museum\u2019s annual tradition, which invites contemporary artists to engage with the architecture of its historic building and collections that in some cases date back thousands of years. Wei\u2019s project will be the seventh in the ongoing Facade Commission series, launched in 2019 and intended as a dialogue between the past and present.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Known for his evocative and unconventional installations exploring themes of urbanization and modernity \u2014 like a series of architectural landmarks made out of dog chews<\/a> \u2014 Wei will create several composite sculptures from a range of materials for The Met. The project marks the Beijing-based artist\u2019s first major institutional exhibition in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement, Wei described the commission as \u201ca challenge and a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo dialogue with the tremendous legacy of human civilization through The Met\u2019s Genesis Facade Commission makes me so excited and anxious,\u201d Wei said.<\/p>\n

The Met\u2019s facade has previously featured artworks by Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu<\/a>, Iranian-German sculptor Nairy Baghramian, and Lee Bul<\/a> of South Korea, each of whom reimagined the museum\u2019s classical architecture through a contemporary lens. The most recent commission, by Jeffrey Gibson, showcases 10-foot bronze sculptures<\/a> of different animals that carry symbolic significance in certain Indigenous cultures. Gibson\u2019s pieces, unveiled in September 2025, will be on view through June 2026.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cLove it! Bite it!\u201d (2005\u20132007), Liu Wei\u2019s sculpture of world-famous buildings made from edible dog chews (photo by Peter Macdiarmid\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Born in 1972 during the Cultural Revolution, Wei rose to prominence<\/a> in China\u2019s contemporary art scene during the early 1990s as part of a movement known as Cynical Realism, whose practitioners created satirical and often humorous paintings reflecting the socio-political climate of the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wei has participated in numerous global exhibitions, including the inaugural China Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, where he showed a light installation titled \u201cStar.\u201d Following several proposal rejections by the 2004 Shanghai Biennale panel, the artist submitted a photograph<\/a> depicting a black-and-white mountain landscape composed of a cluster of naked buttocks. To his surprise, the submission was accepted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, his work always compellingly pierces through perceptions of reality with a blend of rawness and refinement,\u201d said Lesley Ma, associate curator of Asian Art at The Met, in the museum\u2019s statement. \u201cI look forward to seeing how he challenges our expectations for the classical niches and for public sculptures.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced that Chinese artist Liu Wei will create four large-scale sculptures for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138232,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,19,17,967,968],"class_list":{"0":"post-138231","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-metropolitan-museum-of-art","18":"tag-new-york"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}