NEW YORK, NY.- Hybrid beings—imaginary creatures that combine features of different animals, humans, and even plants— abound in the history of art, reflecting the human impulse across time and space to deconstruct, interchange, and reassemble elements of the known world into inventive entities and extraordinary visions. On view this spring at The Met Cloisters, Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas explores fantastic beings in the visual arts over the course of a millennium, from 500 to 1500 CE. A collaborative effort between The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Cloisters location and Michael C. Rockefeller Wing at The Met Fifth Avenue, this exhibition illuminates the parallel but independent traditions of Europe and the Americas to investigate the multiple functions of works depicting hybrids and the roles these objects played in people’s lives. The exhibition will be on view May 18 through October 18, 2026.

"Artistic traditions throughout human history have included images of fantastical hybrid creatures that combine elements of the natural world to evoke extraordinary, otherworldly powers," said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. "Bringing together works from two distinct cultures, Creatures of Myth and Imagination will illuminate the recurring motif of the mythical being and reveal the shared fascinations that drive creativity across time and space."

“Supernatural, composite beings are key figures in the telling of stories, the making of myths, and the bridging of heaven and earth. Above all, they expand the spheres of action of their worldly counterparts. This exhibition explores how, in the hands of artists, imaginary creatures take on physical form and participate in many facets of human experience,” said Julia Perratore, Associate Curator at The Met Cloisters.

“Created from the stuff of nature, hybrid creatures are supernatural, endowed with powers beyond the visible and the knowable,” added Laura Filloy Nadal, Curator in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.

“Above all, these creatures of myth and imagination provide us with ways of thinking about essential questions: they are ways of understanding who we are, and where our boundaries lie,” noted Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.



Creatures of Myth and Imagination presents over 50 objects, including paintings, sculpture, ceramics, ivories, textiles, and metalwork. Drawn mainly from The Met collection, the objects displayed demonstrate how the varied materials of artistic expression are mobilized to create the uncreated. This is the first time that art of the ancient Americas is being presented at The Met Cloisters, opening up exciting new avenues of dialogue between objects rarely seen together. The exhibition also features key loans from the Museo del Templo Mayor, part of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia in Mexico City, including a remarkable sculpture of Tzinacantecuhtli, the Zapotec “bat lord,” that has never before traveled to New York.

Birds with fangs, snakes with feathers, legumes with arms and legs: For millennia, humans have selected and combined elements from nature to devise supernatural creatures unlike anything seen in the known world. A global phenomenon born of the imagination, hybrid beings have played key roles in storytelling, identity formation, and the bridging of heaven and earth. Given material form, they have taken part in sacred rites, enlivened daily life, and joined the dead in their graves.

Creatures of Myth and Imagination begins by considering how, in the Americas and Europe, hybrid creatures could traverse earthly and supernatural realms, linking the human and the divine. Their images conveyed doctrine, established and reinforced identities, and defined social and cosmological boundaries. Monumental representations of these beings occupied the viewer’s space in a dramatic way, enhancing their effectiveness as agents of social control.

The exhibition then moves on to examine the presence of hybrid beings of Europe and the Americas in more intimate settings, where they sometimes took on new meanings.

Representations decorating utilitarian objects could signal an individual’s religious beliefs, political persuasions, and social status. The distinctive, multifunctional, shaped vessel was one beloved option for giving form to hybrids. Once enjoyed in life, these ceramic objects could also be brought to the grave to commemorate the status, identity, and refinement of the departed. In both Europe and the Americas, such vessels provided rich opportunities for self-expression, from the creative choices of artists and patrons to what were surely lively conversations among their users.

Hybrids are creative blends of elements drawn from nature. Artists deconstructed and reassembled distinctive, powerful features, such as wings, claws, and large ears, into impossible beings endowed with exceptional abilities. Those who possessed and beheld composite creatures believed these beings were capable of expanding human spheres of action. In the arts of the Americas and Europe, hybrids indicate an awareness of the natural order while simultaneously disrupting familiar category distinctions. A result of keen observation of the environment, they perhaps represent a way of making sense of nature in all its complexity.

In Medieval Europe and the Americas, rich mythological traditions ensured that many hybrids were believed to be real, even if no human had ever seen them. Thus, to Europeans, unicorns frolicked at the edges of the world, while in northern Peru, fox warriors charged into battle. A challenge for artists to visualize, given their unreality, hybrid beings provided opportunities to use organic materials—from shell and ivory to feathers—that could recall the hybrids’ animal sources and, by extension, activate the abilities of those animals. These traditions converged in the 16th century, the first period of sustained contact between Europe and the Americas, prompting an exchange of imagery and the creation of new hybrids for new contexts and new audiences.

The exhibition concludes with an exploration of how, as composites of animal, vegetable, and mineral forms, hybrid creatures appear in seemingly endless, visually playful combinations, from reinventions of long-standing types, such as the winged angels of Europe and feathered serpents of the Americas, to new confections. In the Americas, hybrids were potent symbols of metaphysical transformation and empowered those who possessed them. It is not always possible to pinpoint the significance of hybrids in the art of the past, in part because their elusive, indeterminate forms resist interpretation and categorization. Yet that variability—and great possibility—is a large part of their appeal. The charm of the composite creature is evident in its abiding popularity today, appearing in a range of media, from children’s books to film and television, reminding us of the persistent human impulse to combine and compound.

Creatures of Myth and Imagination: Europe and the Americas is co-curated by Julia Perratore, Associate Curator at The Met Cloisters; Laura Filloy Nadal, Curator in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing; and Joanne Pillsbury, Andrall E. Pearson Curator, Arts of the Ancient Americas in The Michael C. Rockefeller Wing.