NEW YORK MUSEUMS EXHIBITIONS
AngloMania: Tradition and
Transgression in British Fashion
May 3, 2006–September 4, 2006
The Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries
AngloMania focuses on British fashion from 1976 to 2006, a period of astounding creativity and experimentation. Over the past 30 years, British fashion has been defined by a knowing and self-conscious historicism. In their search for novelty, designers have looked to past styles with an appetite that is as audacious as it is rapacious. Focusing on their postmodern, historicizing tendencies, this exhibition presents a series of tableaux based on Britain’s rich artistic traditions. The irony of satirical prints, the romance of landscape paintings, and the glamour and bravado of grand manner portraits are evoked through a wide spectrum of British designers. The exhibition is set in the Metropolitan Museum’s English period rooms—the Annie Laurie Aitken Galleries—to create a potent dialogue between the past and the present.
Cai Guo-Qiang
on the Roof: Transparent Monument
Until October 29, 2006
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
|
Contemporary
Chinese-born artist Cai Guo-Qiang, known for his elaborate sculpture
installations and gunpowder projects, was invited by the
Metropolitan Museum to create this site-specific installation for
the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, overlooking Central Park
with expansive views of the Manhattan skyline. Included are four
works that present the artist’s reactions to issues of present-day
concern: Clear Sky Black Cloud, an ephemeral sculpture that
consists of an actual black cloud appearing above the Museum’s Roof
Garden Tuesdays through Sundays at noon; Transparent Monument,
a large sheet of glass at the foot of which lie replicas of dead
birds; Nontransparent Monument, a multipart narrative relief
sculpture in stone; and Move Along, Nothing to See Here, a
pair of life-size replicas of crocodiles cast in resin, pierced with
scissors and knives confiscated at airport security checkpoints,
that loom over the Roof Garden space. Beverage and sandwich service
is available from 10:00 a.m. until closing, including Friday and
Saturday evenings. 
The
installation is made possible by a grant from Cynthia Hazen Polsky
and Leon B. Polsky. Additional support has been provided by Caroline
Howard Hyman, Alice King and Roger King, Donna and Benjamin M.
Rosen, and Robert C. Y. Wu.