Designing Tomorrow’s Met: Nader Tehrani

Join Nader Tehrani for a deep dive into the unique and innovative renovation of The Met’s galleries for Ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot Art. The Met is partnering with the Boston-based architectural firm NADAAA, which Tehrani leads as principal designer. Over his nearly three-decade-long career, Tehrani has been dedicated to the research of materiality, labor, and technology as forms of cultural production, and he has used materials in consistently surprising and meaningful ways. In planning the new galleries of Ancient Near Eastern and Cypriot Art, we are developing a radical and enduring approach to presenting the objects. Tehrani’s vision strives to contextualize a framework for the works, alluding to their original setting in time and place. One strategy is for the design to incorporate clay and copper, materials that are foundational to the world views of both regions. Utilizing architecture as the cultural armature that binds the lessons of our past to the challenges we face today, the renovation becomes another lens through which to view the collection itself.

The presentation is followed by a brief discussion with Kim Benzel, Curator in Charge, Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, and Sean Hemingway, John A. and Carole O. Moran Curator in Charge, Department of Greek and Roman Art.