It will be artist Jeffrey Gibson (Colorado Springs, Colorado, 1972), a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, who will create new sculptures for the niches of the New York Metropolitan Museum ’s Fifth Avenue facade. Commissioned by the museum, Gibson will create four figurative sculptures designed to reflect on the relationships between all living things and the environment, which will comprise the Genesis Facade Commission: Jeffrey Gibson, The Animal That Therefore I Am, on view from Sept. 12, 2025 to June 9, 2026.
This is the sixth commission the museum gives for its historic facade and the latest in a series of contemporary commissions, in which the museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between artistic practice, the Metropolitan’s collection, the museum itself and the public.
Jeffrey Gibson’s new works for the niches will draw on his already established iconography, built on a dynamic visual language that blends worldviews and indigenous imagery with abstraction, pattern, materiality and text.
“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 Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Museum. “These new works build on his distinctive use of unconventional materials and reinterpreted forms to explore often overlooked stories and the natural world. We look forward to unveiling his monumental sculptures for the Met’s iconic Fifth Avenue facade.”
“Jeffrey Gibson is an artist extraordinarily attuned to the variety of life that our world encompasses: the human, the animal, the earth itself. His art vibrates and feeds off that life, the stories that never leave us, and the futures his vision makes possible,” said David Breslin, Curator-in-Charge for Modern and Contemporary Art at the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art.
Jeffrey Gibson, an interdisciplinary artist raised in the United States, Germany and Korea, represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2024 for the 60th International Art Exhibition. With his project The space in which to place me, curated by Abigail Winograd and Kathleen Ash-Milby, Gibson was the first Native artist featured in a monographic project at the U.S. Pavilion: his goal was to bring to life a narrative against stereotypes toward Native Americans but also toward the LGBTQ+ community. And also against the “chromophobia,” as he calls it, of contemporary art through an explosion of color, his hallmark.
Since the 2000s, his work has in fact consistently revealed new modes of abstraction, use of text and color. In particular, he has criticized the reductive ways in which indigenous culture has been historically flattened and unduly instrumentalized.
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| Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson will create new sculptures for the Metropolitan Museum's historic facade |
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