Exhibition Dates: January 29, 2024–January 25, 2026
Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Galleries 302, 512, 617, 726, 917
The Met Cloisters, Gallery 9
(New York, January 29, 2024)—Artists and artisans have been intrigued and inspired by the topic of death and visions of life thereafter for millennia.
Afterlives: Contemporary Art in the Byzantine Crypt brings together modern-day works by artists active from 1960 to the present that reckon with death and visualize the afterlife alongside Byzantine Egyptian funerary art and artifacts. On view in the Mary and Michael Jaharis Gallery known as the Byzantine Crypt (Gallery 302), the exhibition includes an editioned work by Adrian Piper, titled
Everything #4, that invites viewers to contemplate its otherworldly statement as they encounter their reflections in a variety of contexts. It will be installed in the heart of the Byzantine Crypt and five other spaces across The Met Fifth Avenue and The Met Cloisters.
The exhibition is made possible by The Jaharis Family Foundation.
The intimate and enchanting Byzantine Crypt, with exposed brick walls and arched portals, was unveiled in the year 2000 after a renovation that reclaimed the space beneath the Museum’s Grand Staircase. In this transhistorical presentation, the gallery’s religious and secular jewelry, textiles, ivory objects, vessels, and architectural sculpture from Early Christian and Coptic monastic sites are complemented and enriched by contemporary sculptures, works on paper, and installations that similarly serve memorial, reliquary, or apotropaic functions.
The works on view in the exhibition will rotate four times during the show’s run, with each rotation consisting of approximately 30 works of art. Highlights presented in the first rotation (on view through May 2024) include a
fifth-century Tunic with Dionysian Ornament (26.9.9) juxtaposed with Ana Mendieta’s
Amategram Series - The Vivification of the Flesh (1981; 1983.502.1); a fourth-century
Coptic Stela (31.8.2) alongside Whitfield Lovell’s drawn portrait on relief assemblage
Wise Like That (2000; 2001.83a-c); figurative sculpted marble
fragments from the Kharga Oasis (25.10.20.42, .44, .45) with Anita Huffington’s pink alabaster
Persephone (1999, 2002.401a, b); and a
Corbel with Human Bust and Acanthus Leaves (fifth–sixth century; 10.176.41) with Walid Raad’s
Preface to the third edition Acknowledgment (Coupe II) (2014; 2017.27). The exhibition includes three editions of
Everything #4, loaned from the Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation, Berlin, to be exhibited along with three editions that were recently acquired by The Met, as well as an audio recording by Kevin Beasley, titled
I.W.M.S.B., courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 Records.
The exhibition is organized by Andrea Achi, Mary and Michael Jaharis Associate Curator of Byzantine Art, and Akili Tommasino, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.
The exhibition will be featured on The Met’s
website as well as on social media using the hashtags #MetAfterlives and #MetByzantine.
Adrian Piper’s editioned work
Everything #4 will be displayed in the following galleries:
The Met Fifth Avenue:
Gallery 917 – Modern and Contemporary Art
Gallery 512 – European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Gallery 617 – European Paintings
Gallery 302 – Byzantine Crypt
Gallery 726 – The American Wing
The Met Cloisters:
Gallery 9 – Gothic Chapel
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January 29, 2024
Contact: Stella Kim
Communications@metmuseum.org
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