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concept:era contemporary

The Seated (I, II, III, IV)

Four bronze sculptures by Wangechi Mutu, 2019. Permanently installed in the four niches of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue façade, New York. The first artwork to occupy those niches in the museum's history. Four female figures drawing on African, Kenyan, and Kikuyu visual traditions.

Scholarly Significance

African contemporary art / institutional intervention — The Seated is the first work to occupy the Met's Fifth Avenue façade niches in the museum's history.

Notes

  • ·The four niches of the Met's Fifth Avenue entrance have been empty since the museum opened in 1902; Mutu is the first artist commissioned to fill them.
  • ·The four figures draw on diverse female forms from African figurative traditions — Kikuyu ceremonial objects, African masks, natural forms — rather than Western sculptural conventions.
  • ·The commission was part of the Met's initiative to engage living artists with the museum's architecture and collection.
  • ·The installation marked Mutu's move back to Nairobi; she described the commission as an opportunity to insert African female bodies into the most prominent American museum façade.
  • ·Reception emphasised both the symbolism of the placement (facing Fifth Avenue and Central Park) and the formal quality of the figures.