Metropolis’ Renovation Rockefeller Wing is a masterpiece

Last month, I encountered an institutional history, the gallery of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the abandoned history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This dirty window once appeared on the wings of the Metropolitan Michael C. Rockefeller, whose purpose was to guard the sky’s marine artifacts from the sprinkled sunshine. Artist Gala Porras-kim shows it at her current solo exhibition, with sloping glass panes as a work of art.

In the Metropolitan Gallery, this human-sized window previously helped create a feeling under the je. But in Carnegie, it looks more like the remains of a rotten building. Porras-kim is a concept artist known for questioning the museum’s collection and displaying artworks truly communicated.

The reason Porras-kim is able to fully get this window is that Rockefeller Wing has been closed since 2021. This week, after a $70 million renovation, the wing will be reopened to the public in a brand new form, and the gallery has been rescheduled. Apart from a large ocean art gallery, this wing is dark and narrow, and what makes these galleries feel isolated. Now the wings feel airy, gorgeous and vibrant. It is a masterpiece, not only due to the redesign of the kulapat yantrasast, it inspired a group of galleries that began to promote the power of art.

Accompanying the redesign is a redesign, which may not be entirely unexpected, as museums often switch their collection performances to address previous gaps these days. But many of these detonators are focused on modern and contemporary art, and this art’s focus on new research surrounding non-Western art centuries ago feels like something new. It is likely to act as a model that other institutions follow.

The most obvious transformation here takes place in the stunning Oceania gallery, which has been a major attraction for Met since its first opening in 1982, about 13 years after a donation by Nelson Rockefeller in honor of his son, who had obtained these goals before the Galerie of Papi committee committee in 1961 before the disappearance of New Guinea. New Guinea, and produced between 1970 and 1973, returned; many of its paintings on West Horse palm paper look as delicate as decades. But the ceiling has changed: the painter’s descendants worked closely with the Mets to reconfigure the sheets so that the composition of the ceiling now better reflects the intentions of its original manufacturer.

A set of wooden Asmat funeral poles once stood under the ceiling, towering above the audience’s heads. Now they have moved to a separate gallery dedicated to Asmat culture, and their location is surprisingly Nioge (Barwood cloth) Painting made by the people of Ömie in Papua New Guinea. One is the work of Ilma Savari (ajikum’e), whose works have dot-like patterns here that have historically been passed down to men’s bodies in the form of tattoos. Her work has been newly acquired by the Metropolitan (Met), and is available for display here as yantrasast covers a portion of nearby windows, protecting it from the sun, once jeopardizing the artwork here.

There are fewer immediate changes in the entire wing. The wall text has been redesigned and now performs the dual duty of better articulating the personal cultural context of most objects, while also more transparently articulating the source of what is being observed. The latter gesture is a clear response to the West’s call for the repatriation of plundered objects, and the Metropolitan’s recent efforts to establish its source research department. (In terms of the Metropolis, the Metropolitan Metropolis was violently plundered by the Kingdom of Benin and returned to Nigeria a few years ago. This reward is now explicitly mentioned in the Wall text of this wing, but the museum is still displaying other works of Benin, which raises questions about whether there is no more justice yet, which raises Thorne’s question.)

One wall panel notes: “Our research is underway and the existing gaps fill as new details are revealed.” Curators working under Alisa Lagamma seem to be more determined than ever, with more respect, naming creators, who have not mentioned in the wall text before and showcase etiquette videos previously described in the catalog only.

Yantrasast’s redesign emphasizes openness, allowing you to peek into the glass walls of Oceania galleries and explore the space of African art directly. Implicitly, the architecture shows that none of these cultures are completely isolated, a re-entering of the ways in which art history is often taught and studied in the West. This effect is most noticeable in the African Art Gallery, a parade of exciting mini-expression centered on a particular culture. In the maze of walls and glass, the sculptures are uneven, and these galleries are prism-shaped and pleasing. You can see people separated by centuries, geography refracting each other, distorting traditional flows of time and space.

It is still possible to find beloved objects here – especially a 16th-century ivory sculpture depicting Idià, the king of Benin, one of the jewels in the crown of Met since the 1970s, but they were lost in a sea of ​​not getting too many items. This is a good thing: one barometer of Rehang’s success is how many surprises appear, and there are many here.

In this case, the star of this wing – for me at least, is a gallery dedicated to work by the artist in Yorubaju, whose work is now called Nigeria. Here is a puppet depicting a deity called «sanyìn, whose body is made of a thick suit made of fat from thick pink and green beads. There is also a great crown with a face adorned with insect eyes on the surface, and its students popped up towards the audience. If these works were viewed before, I don’t remember them. Now, I think I will never forget them.

Also impressive is all the fiber art. In a gallery specializing in modern Ghanaian art, there is one about. 1910–40 Kent Asante-Akan artist’s cloth, maroon maroon bands and green patterns have alternating bands. This wonderful piece of cloth doesn’t necessarily mean a museum like the Metropolitan, it will be worn by a person and stepped onto the world. But it looks at home here, especially when seen against the backdrop of another sturdy cotton chunky in the nearby Sierra Leone Gallery kpoikpoi Textiles may be used as burial parcels or wall hangings. Both works remind people that crafts such as this have long been the focus of everyday life in many cultures.

In the American Gallery, fiber fever continues, and unfortunately it is much less than the gallery of African and marine art. Here, Metropolitans showcase the photosensitive weaving that emerged due to the renovation of Yantrasast. There is an extraordinary Vari top in Peru that abstracts teeth, eyes and arms into pink spots. Its shines as bright as the golden sculptures of the Caribbean people visible nearby.

Adjacent to the Gallery of America is part of a small temporary exhibition, the first to feature Senegalese-born modernist Iba Ndiaye, who spent his time in France. The exhibition outlines the ways Ndiaye draws on Western Canons and then uses his style to his advantage. It placed his self-portrait, a bunch of nerves of chalk scraping around, forming a face next to Edgar Degas, which the curator said inspired Ndiaye. JOINTINGS, such as one, embodies this desire to bridge timelines and culture.

Curators stumbled while trying to make connections between the wings of the Metropolitan Antiques and these galleries. Ancient Egyptian art is still separated from itself halfway through the museum, and it has never been mentioned here, as if Egyptian art is not African art. Meanwhile, one of the oldest objects in Rehang is the Nubian stele from the 2nd century BC, which is awkwardly divided in its own gallery. It is quite confusing that the stele does not even belong to the metropolis, it was borrowed from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, so it is unclear what will happen to the gallery after the latter museum takes the article back.

The Wing more successfully linked its holdings to the 20th-century art gallery, which is just a few steps away (this is next to a full overhaul). Then, it makes sense why modern and contemporary art often appears in Rehang. The Ethiopian-born modernist Skunder Boghossian abstracted on kraft paper in the 1980s, next to a 19th-century scroll with a message of rehabilitation from Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, while the 2006 El Anatsui aluminum tapestry is particularly shocking in the Asante-Asante-Akakan-Akakan-Akakan-Akante-akane-akane-akane-akane-akane tapestry. Kent cloth.

The inclusion of these works reminds the audience of influential African artists such as Boghossian and Anatsui, part of the art historical continuity with all other views on the wing, most of which were made in the 19th and 20th centuries. Rockefeller Wing no longer seems to be as separate from the rest of other metropolises. No longer feels like the moment off-road prison that the Carnegie Museum’s Porras-kim’s work hints at. This wing is already full of vitality.

Some contemporary artists commissioned art for this wing, and obviously wanted it to remain in this way. Taloi Havini, a member of the Haköpoy, created a copper ornament made of copper, which she patted with cobalt blue and then etched with arrows, concentric squares and arrows that mimicked Haköpatters. Havini hangs her 2025 work, Nakas: Matrix markOn the wall facing the window, UV light was once harmful to UV light. In the Metropolis, Javini’s art acts as a shield to ensure that the works behind them survive according to their due.