The Met just unveiled four new sculptures atop its famous steps-here's how they relate back to New York's natural habitat

"The Fifth Avenue facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art has long been the city's most photographed museum entrance-tourists taking selfies, fashionistas strutting up the staircase, brides in ballgowns on photo shoots. But this month, the stone colonnade has a new cast of characters: a hawk, a squirrel, a coyote and a deer, each rendered in 10-foot bronze and poised in the niches above the steps like they've been waiting all along to join the party."

"The installation, The Animal That Therefore I Am , comes from Jeffrey Gibson, the acclaimed artist who represented the U.S. at last year's Venice Biennale. It's part of The Met's Genesis Facade Commission and marks Gibson's first foray into monumental bronze sculpture. His choice of animals isn't random; they're all species native to New York, creatures that city-dwellers encounter in parks, backyards and occasionally sprinting down Broadway. By elevating them to mythic scale, Gibson spotlights the uneasy coexistence between the metropolis and the wild."

"Gibson, who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, is known for fusing Indigenous visual languages with contemporary abstraction. Here, he's layered the animal forms with abstract patterning that recalls beadwork and textiles. The surfaces bristle with color and texture, pulling traditional motifs into dialogue with the museum's neoclassical facade. It's a deliberate collision of histories, materials and perspectives."

The Animal That Therefore I Am installs 10-foot bronze sculptures of a hawk, squirrel, coyote and deer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Fifth Avenue facade niches. The works are part of The Met's Genesis Facade Commission and introduce monumental bronze figures to the neoclassical colonnade. The animals are New York native species, scaled to mythic proportions to emphasize the uneasy coexistence between the metropolis and the wild. Surfaces incorporate abstract patterning that recalls beadwork and textiles, bringing color and texture that pull traditional motifs into dialogue with classical architecture, colliding histories, materials and perspectives.

Read at Time Out New York