New George Condo Sculpture Now On View At The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera today unveils a new sculpture by American artist George Condo: Constellation of Voices, now on view on the Met's outdoor Terrace facing Lincoln Center Plaza. The work is part of the Met's long-running visual arts initiative, Gallery Met. The work can be viewed by all guests to Lincoln Center Plaza.

Constellation of Voices is a monumental abstract head, cast in aluminum and finished with gold leaf, presented on a custom plinth in faux limestone-surfaced aluminum. The sculpture, created in 2019, measures 162 inches (13 feet, 6 inches) high by 82 inches (6 feet, 10 inches) wide by 73-1/2 inches (6 feet, 1-1/2 inches) deep and weighs approximately 1,400 pounds.

For Condo, Constellation of Voices "is the material form of sound ... what it looks like and how it shines like gold when it is in perfect harmony...I wanted to reflect a mythological and abstract world from every culture composed of pre-classical civilizations, the chorus of Greek drama and the abstraction of modern day opera."

Gallery Met, under the direction of founder Dodie Kazanjian, continues its exhibition of two large-scale paintings by contemporary British artist Cecily Brown, Triumph of the Vanities I and Triumph of the Vanities II, on view on the Grand Tier and Dress Circle levels of the Metropolitan Opera House.

George Condo was born in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1957. He attended the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he studied music theory and art history. His art can be viewed as a multi-layered experience that brings the viewer in touch with a psychological exploration of human nature. Through a process of transformation involving art historical languages and the actualization of philosophical content, his paintings create a visible window into the world we live in.

In 2019, he was selected to participate in the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia: May You Live In Interesting Times, curated by Ralph Rugoff. He was also the subject of a major retrospective of works on paper titled The Way I Think at The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., in early 2017, which travelled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark in the fall of 2017. In 2016, his work was the feature of a museum-wide exhibition, Confrontation, at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Museum Berggruen, Berlin, curated by Udo Kittelmann. In 2011, the New Museum, New York presented the retrospective exhibition, Mental States. This exhibition travelled to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Hayward Gallery, London; and Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Philadelphia; Broad Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles; Tate Modern, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fonds National d'Art Contemporain, Ministère de la Culture, Paris; Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, Ile de France, Paris; Staedel Museum, Frankfurt; Dakis Joannou Collection Foundation, Athens; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo; Museu d'Art Contemporani, Barcelona; the Doron Sebbag Art Collection, ORS Ltd., Tel Aviv; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.