Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City
The 28-foot-tall cluster of steel-and-Plexiglas polyhedrons sits on the roof of the Met and welcomes viewers to climb in.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Through Nov. 4
Tomás Saraceno’s summertime addition to the roof of the Met is a cloud in name only, said Kyle Chayka in ArtInfo.com. A 28-foot-tall cluster of steel-and-Plexiglas polyhedrons, Cloud City weighs about 20 tons and in no way looks as if it needs to be tethered in place by the tension cables attached to it. “The sculpture is fun,” at least. Outfitted with transparent stairways and numerous mirrored surfaces, it welcomes viewers to climb in and get themselves pleasantly disoriented while imagining that someday humans might build airborne cities that similarly evoke cell clusters. If you clamber in, “don’t be surprised to find yourself looking at the bottom of your shoes through the reflection of a side wall,” or to find that this was probably the worst day ever to decide to wear a skirt. Enjoy the experience, but don’t expect a work “transcendent enough to achieve liftoff.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Saraceno has done better, said Roberta Smith in The New York Times. The 39-year-old Argentine has often promoted his vision of cloud-like cities with “ingeniously engineered” assemblages of large, clear plastic spheres. But even those more whimsical installations don’t seem as if they belong in an art museum. “The recurring mantra about Saraceno’s work is that it combines architecture, art, and science. It does, but unequally: Art is the loser, the part he has thought through and connected to the least.” Sitting inside Cloud City, you’ll enjoy “some of the best views of Central Park’s green ocean of treetops ever.” But nature deserves all the credit there. Saraceno’s work often directs us to take notice of nature’s wonders, but “it largely skirts the challenges of transformation and originality that might make it of more lasting interest as art.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
America might be in a second Gilded Age
In the Spotlight The first Gilded Age was marked by rising inequality and a push for social change
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Bonnie Jo Campbell's 6 favorite books about unconventional relationships
Feature The former National Book Award finalist recommends works by Tove Jansson, Virginia Woolf, and more
By The Week US Published
-
It's not just an act
Opinion Many voters don't take Trump's threats seriously
By William Falk Published