The Met 150Héctor Zamora has been commissioned to create a site-specific work for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden

Carol Bove will create new sculptures for The Met Fifth Avenue Facade

New York, N.Y. (February 20, 2020) — The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced two upcoming commissions at The Met Fifth Avenue. Mexican artist Héctor Zamora has been selected to create a site-specific intervention for The Met's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. The Roof Garden Commission: Héctor Zamora, Lattice Detour will open on April 21 and be on view through October 25, 2020. In September 2020, American artist Carol Bove will unveil new sculptures for The Met Fifth Avenue's facade niches, the second in a new series of site-specific commissions for the exterior of the Museum. The Facade Commission: Carol Bove will be on view September 9, 2020 through March 30, 2021.  

The Roof Garden Commission: Héctor Zamora, Lattice Detour is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. Additional support is provided by Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon B. Polsky.

"Both the Cantor Roof Garden and the Museum's facade offer prominent platforms for new ideas and creative expression. We are thrilled to work with Héctor Zamora and Carol Bove on the next two commissions in this milestone year—the Museum's 150th anniversary," said Max Hollein, Director of The Met. "Zamora's ability to transform public spaces and the built environment in ways that are often infused with tension related to current events is sure to make for a striking intervention on the Roof Garden. And Bove's keen attunement to art history and the legacies of modernist and minimalist sculpture will make for a fascinating contrast with the facade. We look forward to unveiling their works."

Sheena Wagstaff, The Met's Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, added, "In their own way, each artist will challenge conventional approaches to two very different architectural spaces. For the Roof Garden, Héctor Zamora will invite us to reconsider the panoramic view of the city skyline and the implications of obstruction and permeability within a social space. Carol Bove will animate the constrained architectural framing of the Beaux-Arts facade with colorful stylized abstractions."

The Roof Garden Commission series was established in 2013 by the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. The series of site-specific commissions on The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden has featured work by Imran Qureshi (2013), Dan Graham (2014), Pierre Huyghe (2015), Cornelia Parker (2016), Adrián Villar Rojas (2017), Huma Bhabha (2018), and most recently, Alicja Kwade (2019). The Roof Garden Commission is accompanied by a dedicated publication. 

The Facade Commission is part of a new series of contemporary commissions at The Met 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. The Facade Commission was inaugurated in September 2019 with Wangechi Mutu's The NewOnes, will free Us (September 9, 2019–June 8, 2020).
 

 

About the artists

 

Carol Bove
Born in 1971 in Geneva, Carol Bove was raised in Berkeley, California, and studied at New York University. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Known for works that incorporate found and constructed elements with a unique formal, technical, and conceptual inventiveness, Bove, through her practice, consistently challenges and expands the possibilities of formal abstraction.

Bove's large-scale sculptures have recently been displayed at: the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); Unlimited at Art Basel (2018); the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria, The Contemporary Austin (2017); and Women of Venice at the Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), where she was invited to respond to the legacy of Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti; and City Hall Park in New York (2016) as part of the group exhibition, The Language of Things, organized by Public Art Fund. In 2013, she created a series of sculptures for the High Line at the Rail Yards in New York.

The artist's first major museum presentation was held at Kunstverein, Hamburg (2003). Solo exhibitions have been presented at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); The Common Guild, Glasgow (2013); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2010); Tate St Ives, England (2009); Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin (2006); Kunsthalle Zürich (2004); and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2004). 

Group exhibitions include the 58th Venice Biennale (2019); the 57th Venice Biennale (2017); documenta 13, Kassel, Germany (2012); the 54th Venice Biennale (2011); and the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008). Bove's work is currently on view alongside John Chamberlain's in a two-person presentation at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through the summer of 2020. 

Héctor Zamora
Born in 1974 in Mexico City, Mexico, Héctor Zamora currently lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. He received a bachelor's degree in graphic design from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, Mexico City in 1998. Zamora's work transcends the conventional exhibition space to reinvent and redefine it, generating friction between the common roles of public and private, exterior and interior, organic and geometric, real and imaginary.

His solo exhibitions include Movimientos Emisores de Existencia, LABOR, Mexico City (2019); Nas Coxas + Acima de tudo, Luciana Brito Galeria, São Paulo (2018); Ordem e Progresso, MAAT, Lisbon, Portugal (2017) Memorándum, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, Mexico (2017); Re/vuelta, MARCO, Monterrey, México (2017); Dinâmica Não Linear, CCBB São Paulo, Brazil (2016); Ordre et Progrès, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France (2016); Panglossian Paradigm, Redcat, Los Angeles, California (2013); Architecture + Art, SMoCA, Scottsdale, Arizona (2012); Inconstância Material, Luciana Brito Gallery (2012); White Noise, Auckland Arts Festival, New Zealand (2011); Paraísos Ofrecidos, El Eco, Mexico City (2011); De Belg wordt geboren met een baksteen in de maag, FLACC, Genk, Belgium (2008) Cerca Series: Héctor Zamora, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) (2007); Líneas de Suspensión, ensayo sobre GeometríaFunicular, Galería Enrique Guerrero, Mexico City (2005); Paracaidista, Av. Revolución 1608 bis, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2004); a=360º r/R, installation at La Torre de los Vientos, Mexico City (2000).

Zamora's work has also appeared in international group exhibitions, including Seismic Movements, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2020); Durch Mauern Gehen, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin (2019); Det Andet Sted, KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Køge, Denmark (2019); Condemned to be Modern / Pacific Standard LA / LA, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (2017); Brasil Beleza?!, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague, Netherlands (2016); Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2016); Buildering: Misbehaving the City, Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary, Cincinnati, Ohio (2014); Resisting the Present: Mexico, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France (2012); and Eco: Arte Mexicano Contemporáneo, Reina Sofía, Madrid (2005).  The artist has also participated in numerous biennials such as the 11th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018); 14th Lyon Biennial (2017); 4th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia (2017); 12th Havana Biennial, Havana, Cuba (2015); 8th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial, China. (2014); 13th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, Turkey (2013); 12th International Cairo Biennial, Cairo, Egypt (2010); 6th Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom (2010); 53rd Venice Biennial, Italy (2009); 27th São Paulo Biennial, Brazil; and 9th Havana Biennial, Cuba (2006). 

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Contact: Ann Bailis, Alexandra Kozlakowski, Micol Spinazzi

communications@metmuseum.org; T 212 570 3951