One of the great joys of my daily work here at The Met is my close collaboration with my curatorial colleagues. As I continue to evolve performance practice at the Museum, I work with curators from across our three locations—The Met Fifth Avenue, The Met Breuer, and The Met Cloisters—and throughout the seventeen curatorial departments to interrogate the collection, animate the galleries, and deepen the relationships between the visitors and the art. Over the course of the MetLiveArts 2018–19 season, we will launch a few unprecedented curatorial collaborations, ones that hopefully will inspire and delight the artists, audiences, and curators.
Artist in Residence
Julia Bullock. Photo by Christian Steiner
I am thrilled and honored to announce that our 2018–19 artist in residence is the extraordinary Julia Bullock. In addition to being a sublime vocalist, Julia is an intellectual powerhouse. During her residency, she will give voice to narratives that have been silenced from American history, taking on marginalized narratives in performances that will feature the lives and words of Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, and Thornton Dial, alongside others whose stories have been lost. I know that my colleague Sylvia Yount, the Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing, is passionate about this topic as well. She, too, seeks to broaden the family of voices represented in the American Wing collection.
Battle! Hip-Hop in Armor
Another unprecedented collaboration that we are planning for next season will take place in one of the most beloved areas of the Museum; I'm referring, of course, to the Arms and Armor Court. Pierre Terjanian, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Curator in Charge of the Department of Arms and Armor, and I have often talked about how lifeless the armor can feel in its cases, and how this statis stands in such opposition to the history and meaning of these objects.
Curator Pierre Terjanian (right) discusses a piece of chainmail with members of It's Showtime NYC. Photo by Erin Flannery
This coming season, after years of working closely with Pierre and researching the collection, we have created an unprecedented opportunity: Together we will bring the armor to life, show its historical meaning, and examine its current relevance through a series of commissioned dance battles, created and performed by dancers from It's Showtime NYC from the South Bronx's Dancing in the Streets. It will be a groundbreaking way to experience these objects.
Ensemble in Residence
Sonnambula at The Met Cloisters. Photo by Paula Lobo
The 2018–19 season will also take MetLiveArts up to The Met Cloisters. I have been working with C. Griffith Mann, Michel David-Weill Curator in Charge of the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, to activate those galleries over the past few years with experiments such as the performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen's monumental KLANG and the Audible Cloisters: Guitar Marathon in 2016.
I'm delighted to announce that we will be welcoming the early-music ensemble Sonnambula to be our first ever ensemble in residence at The Met Cloisters. Sonnambula's members have put together a stunning series that will resonate deeply in the context of the medieval galleries and architectural elements—and they'll be collaborating with a fantastic range of artists, from the Renaissance band Piffaro to the photographer and performance artist Teju Cole.
The upcoming MetLiveArts season took me deeper than ever before into collaborations with a diverse range of curators and departments, from Asian Art and the American Wing, to Ancient Near Eastern Art, Drawings and Prints, and so many more. We hope you join us for the upcoming season of MetLiveArts and explore the full season on our online calendar and in our season brochure. See you soon.
To purchase tickets to any MetLiveArts event, visit www.metmuseum.org/tickets; call 212-570-3949; or stop by the Great Hall Box Office, open Monday–Saturday, 11 am–3:30 pm.
