The Metropolitan Museum of New York presents from Sept. 12, 2025, through June 9, 2026, a new contemporary intervention on its Fifth Avenue façade: four bronze sculptures by Jeffrey Gibson. The installation, titled The Genesis Facade Commission: Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal Therefore I Am, marks the artist’s first large-scale exploration with bronze, integrating elements of wood, textiles and beads into the sculpture to build textures and visual references to indigenous culture.
Gibson, a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, conceived the works as expressions of metamorphic relationships between living things and the environment, transforming the museum’s neoclassical niches into a stage for his figurative and conceptual vision. Each sculpture, ten feet high, represents an animal typical of the New York region: a hawk, a squirrel, a coyote, and a deer. The forms emerge from reproduced wooden supports and are combined with patinated abstract patterns, recalling beads and traditional textiles from various indigenous traditions, in a visual language that blends animate and inanimate elements.
“Jeffrey Gibson is one of the most extraordinary artists of his generation and a pioneering figure in the field of Native and indigenous art,” said Max Hollein, director and CEO of the Met. “These new works build on his distinctive use of unconventional materials and reinvented forms employed to explore often overlooked histories and the natural world. We are delighted to have his monumental sculptures installed on the Met’s iconic Fifth Avenue facade.”
“Jeffrey Gibson is an artist extraordinarily sensitive to the diverse forms of life that our world hosts-the human, the animal, the earth itself. His art vibrates and pulsates with this life, the stories that never leave us, and the futures his vision makes possible,” added David Breslin, curator in charge of modern and contemporary art.
The project draws inspiration from Jacques Derrida’s book The Animal That Therefore I Am, which analyzes the violence inherent in human domination of animals. Gibson connects this theme to broader cycles of conflict, highlighting how selected species have adapted to humanized environments and inviting the public to reflect on the challenges they face and the knowledge they offer. The sculptures dialogue with their surroundings, from the natural landscape of the Hudson River Valley, where the artist lives and works, to the urban ecology of Central Park, which surrounds the museum.
The installation represents the second collaboration between the Met and Genesis as part of the contemporary commissions program, aimed at stimulating a dialogue between the artist’s practice, the museum’s collections and the public. The project receives principal support from Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang, the Director’s Fund, and Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky, with additional support from Sarah Arison, Helen Lee-Warren and David Warren and the Bronzini Vender family. Production of the works benefited from technical support from Hauser & Wirth.
Jeffrey Gibson, who was born and raised in the United States, Germany, and Korea, is known for an interdisciplinary path that ranges from abstract painting to film and performance to curating and organizing collective art projects. His work often integrates indigenous aesthetic traditions and materials, reinterpreting them in a contemporary and critical way with respect to historical representations of indigenous culture. In recent years he has exhibited in major international institutions, including The Broad (2025), MASS MoCA (2024), ICA San Francisco (2022), SITE Santa Fe (2022), and Denver Art Museum (2018). In 2024, he represented the United States at the 60th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Gibson’s works are part of permanent collections at such prestigious museums as the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Canada, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C, the Portland Art Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The artist is the recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award (2019), among other honors, and is currently resident artist at Bard College, in Annandale, New York, where he continues his research and experimentation.
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| Jeffrey Gibson unveils four bronze sculptures on the facade of the Met in New York City |
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