FORT WORTH, TX.- Director Marla Price announces the acquisition of a significant work by Wangechi Mutu, The Seated III, 2019. The large sculpture of a seated female figure entwined in bronze coils will become part of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth’s permanent collection. The new work will be on view in one of the Modern’s first-floor pavilion galleries beginning Saturday, December 19.

Mutu was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, and now divides her time between there and Brooklyn. She created The Seated III as part of a four-sculpture commission for the façade of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the exhibition The NewOnes, will free Us. The work and its mirror image, The Seated I, occupied niches facing Fifth Avenue, along with another mirrored pair, The Seated II and The Seated IV. Each figure is cast in an edition of three. Two of the sculptures have entered the Met’s permanent collection, and The Seated III will soon take up her vigil overlooking the Modern’s reflecting pond.

Price comments, “Wangechi Mutu’s recent group of four bronze female figures is exciting and powerful, and we are honored to add one of them to our permanent collection.”

“Mutu’s The Seated III will change the face of the Modern. Like a divine presence presiding over the pond, this bronze goddess will shine on all who enter the museum, exuding a calm strength,” remarks Senior Curator Andrea Karnes.

The artist’s interest in caryatids is centered around the carved bodies of strong women that are incorporated into many traditions of classical African sculpture. They include the royal staffs of the Kingdom of Luba from Central Africa, the holy stools of the Yoruba kings, the figures of mothers in Makonde ritual stools, and many others. The caryatids of African sculpture predate the classical Greek and Roman architectural figures, which are essentially anthropomorphic columns. These particular African caryatids represent the divine female in her role as a central pillar and are symbolic of her responsibility in society. It is these singular caryatids that inspired The New Ones, those relieved from their role of eternal weight-bearers.

Mutu rewrites the role of the caryatid. The Seated III bears only her own weight and is unattached to the building or any structure around her. She is serene and regal, and her calm extends to her fingers and her expression, which is that of a woman in her rightful place. Her garment is fashioned from sinewy coils that envelop and protect her body, draping around her suggestively like heavy embellishment. Her stretched head refers to the tradition of binding craniums in many ancient high-status individuals, like wealthy women of the Mangbetu, royalty from ancient Kemet, and even rulers of the Aztec and Mayan empires. Those painful and heavy enhancements and alterations were symbols of great status.