NEW YORK, NY.- This fall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will unveil a new suite of sculptures by Liu Wei (born 1972, Beijing, China) in the niches of its Fifth Avenue facade, marking the artist’s first major project in the United States and The Met’s first presentation of a commissioned work by an artist from China since 2006. Widely recognized for his ambitious sculptures and installations that examine processes of transformation, urbanization, and social change, Liu will create four monumental works that respond to both the Museum’s architecture and the encyclopedic scope of its collection. Through a dynamic visual language of assemblage and reconfiguration, the project explores the continual reshaping of historical and contemporary experience through rupture and healing. The Genesis Facade Commission: Liu Wei, Speculation will be on view from September 17, 2026, through June 8, 2027.
“Liu Wei’s sculptures for The Genesis Facade Commission are sure to reflect the curiosity, innovation—and even humor—he is known for," said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “This commission also reflects the spirit of The Met’s Tang Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art, opening in 2030, where global perspectives and boundary-pushing artistic practices like Liu Wei’s will be at the heart of how we present art of our time. We are honored to work with Liu Wei to expand the possibilities of the iconic Fifth Avenue facade with his first major project at an American institution.”
“For this commission, Liu Wei will use his dynamic language of reconfiguration and assemblage to address conflicts and contradictions in society,” said Lesley Ma, Ming Chu Hsu and Daniel Xu Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met and curator of the project. “For me, his work always compellingly pierces through perceptions of reality with a blend of rawness and refinement. I look forward to seeing how he challenges our expectations for the classical niches and for public sculptures.”
“The Genesis Facade Commission allows us to continually rethink how The Met introduces itself to each visitor and to the world. Liu Wei’s clever remixes of readymade motifs transform the everyday into the miraculous, and his sculptures’ beguiling interplay between contemplation, surprise, and revelation is also the very business of The Met,” said David Breslin, Leonard A. Lauder Curator in Charge of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. “As we look ahead to the opening of the new Tang Wing in 2030, The Genesis Facade Commissions stand as The Met’s most visible and dynamic platform for contemporary art, bringing our present and future ambitions to the fore.”
“To dialogue with the tremendous legacy of human civilization through The Met’s Genesis Facade Commission makes me so excited and anxious,” said Liu Wei. “What a challenge and a blessing.”
Liu Wei’s project for The Met’s Fifth Avenue facade will be the seventh in a series of commissions for the historic exterior and the third presented under The Genesis Facade Commission, the multiyear partnership with Genesis to support the annual contemporary art commission. Liu’s commission explores themes of fragmentation, transformation, and renewal through four monumental sculptures. Responding to both the encyclopedic scope of The Met’s collection and the high visibility of the facade, the project reflects on cycles of rupture and repair that shape individuals, cities, and societies across time. Liu’s sculptures will combine organic and geometric forms, toggle between macro- and microscopic perspectives, and collapse the past and the future. The two central sculptures flanking the Museum’s entrance will be towering, while the outer sculptures will be more delicate in scale, all with references to historical architecture and monuments. Each sculpture contains parts with different material finishes, textures, and colors that would fulfill Liu’s vision for “a pile of still life objects brusquely sutured together.” The project thus reimagines the relationship between contemporary art and The Met’s Beaux-Arts architecture.
A recurring motif throughout the commission is the human hand: a form that carries a rich range of artistic, cultural, and symbolic associations across time and place. Long central to artistic practice and representation, the hand serves as a point of connection between the recognizable and the fantastical, anchoring Liu’s exploration of transformation, perception, and imagination.
The exhibition’s title, Speculation, reflects both the work’s formal language of assemblage and reconfiguration and the uncertainties that accompany periods of profound change. Shaped by the artist’s experience living in the age of globalization, especially in a rapidly modernizing China during a period marked by dramatic economic, political, and social transformation, the commission considers the tensions inherent in the desire for and the processes of invention, adaptation, and renewal. Through unexpected combinations of forms and references, Liu’s sculptures embody these contradictions, inviting visitors to contemplate the unpredictable forces that shape contemporary life and historical experience. In doing so, the works position the Museum’s facade as a site for dialogue, reflection, and discovery.
This project is the latest in The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist’s practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met’s audiences. These commissions—featuring artists Wangechi Mutu, Hew Locke, Carol Bove, Nairy Baghramian, Lee Bul, and most recently, Jeffrey Gibson—are a cornerstone of The Met’s expanding Modern and Contemporary Art department, which continues to grow in scope through new acquisitions, exhibitions, and the development of the Tang Wing—opening in 2030—which will offer a transformative new space for engaging with art from 1890 to today.
Since the late 1990s, Liu Wei (BFA, 1996, oil painting, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou) has addressed realities of our time through a wide range of media—including photography, painting, video, sculpture, and installation. A key figure of a pioneering generation of artists from China who sought to define “conceptual art” on their own terms against the backdrop of rapid societal transformation, Liu has developed an oeuvre that challenges art historical tropes of abstraction, figuration, and the readymade. Known for his virtuosic command of sites and scale, he reconfigures fragments from the urban environment, historical sources, and bodily forms to create sculptural installations that evoke awe and agitation. With a sense of urgency, his work captures and critiques the reoccurring conflicts and contradictions in society with which we must contend.
The Genesis Facade Commission at The Met will be Liu’s first major presentation in the United States, following solo exhibitions in important museums in Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul, and Cleveland in the past decade. He has been featured in prestigious and historic group exhibitions, including the inaugural China Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale (2005); Shanghai Biennial (2004, 2010); Lyon Biennale (2007, 2015); Sharjah Biennial (2013); Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World, Guggenheim Museum, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2018); The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); and the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), among others. Liu lives and works in Beijing, China.
