Roof Garden Commission – serie

This exploration of Petrit Halilaj’s site-specific installation reflects the artist’s personal experience as a refugee of war and the universal hopes and fears captured in children’s drawings  Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj (born 1986, Kostërc, former Yugoslavia) creates complex, immersive installations that claim space for freedom, desire, intimacy, and identity while expressing his wish to alter the course of personal and collective histories. In his first major outdoor installation, the artist reflects on his experience as a refugee and explores the intersection of reality and fantasy through the rich world of children’s drawings. This volume examines Halilaj’s inspiration for the work in found inscriptions, carvings, and scribbles collected from desks at his former primary school and other schools in Eastern Europe—a record of young people’s fantasies, fears, and private messages conveyed in many languages. An interview with Halilaj connects his practice with those of artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Julio González, situates this project within his broader career, and considers how memory, identity, and history present in his work. This publication reveals his new installation to be at once a story of children in a time and place marked by social and political conflict and a universal reflection on youthful imagination, hopes, yearnings, anxieties, and dreams.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(April 30–October 27, 2024)

Documenting Jennie C. Jones’s multisensory site-specific artwork, this volume highlights her inspirations—from Minimalism and Modernism to avant-garde music  Multimedia artist Jennie C. Jones draws on the aesthetics of minimalism and the improvisational qualities of avant-garde music to consider the sonic potential of abstraction. This volume, the latest in The Met’s Roof Garden Commission series, documents Jones’s dynamic installation. It features a trio of sculptural forms based on stringed instruments—a zither, a one-string, and an Aeolian harp—joined by a floor-based work that serves as the “conductor” of this ensemble. Full of sonic possibility, the sculptures sit quietly until they are played by the movement of the wind. An essay situates Ensemble within the artist’s larger practice and an interview with Jones conducted by Glenn Ligon charts the development of the commission, connects her site-responsive work to the collection and architecture of The Met, and explores the artist’s unique engagement with sound and visual abstraction.  Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press  Exhibition Schedule:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(April 15–October 19, 2025)

The artist Dan Graham (b. 1942) has a wide-ranging practice that encompasses writing, performance art, installation, video, photography, and architecture. Throughout his career, Graham has examined the symbiosis between architectural environments and their inhabitants, particularly in his pavilions made of glass and mirrors.His new installation, created for the roof garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, addresses current issues about suburban psychology and political surveillance. Graham’s work combines landscaping, hedges, and two-way mirrors to create a provocative, immersive experience for viewers. This creatively designed publication includes an insightful interview between the artist and Sheena Wagstaff and focuses not only on Graham’s latest commission but also on his previous landscape-oriented installations, providing a focused, fascinating study of one of today’s leading contemporary artists.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition Schedule:The Metropolitan Museum of Art(04/28/14–11/02/14)