Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Morning Glory
Sopheap Pich Cambodian
Not on view
“During Pol Pot’s [regime in the] 1970s, the most important source of nourishment for the population, other than rice, was morning glory. Because it is the easiest plant to grow, it became the vegetable of almost every meal. Cambodians ate so much morning glory it is surprising that we still eat it today. I think it must be one of the lowest in the culinary food chain; the flower of the morning glory has almost no nutritional value at all. It also dies very quickly after being picked. It has a beautiful shape though—having the shape of the iconic RCA phonograph. My idea was simple: to make a gigantic portrait of the morning glory plant with flowers as the best way possible to commemorate its importance to me. To make it at this scale was a risk: we spent almost six months making a work that we didn’t know what the end result would be, nor if it would have any value as an art object.” — Sopheap Pich
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