Between Earth and Heaven Installation at the Met

  • 16 years ago
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The Ghanain-born sculptor El Anatsui was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Monday morning to install his sculptural work, “Between Earth and Heaven,” in the museum’s African galleries. The Met acquired the piece in 2006, and it will be the centerpiece of an exhibition, beginning in September, of classical African textiles and contemporary artwork inspired by them.

On first glance, the piece resembles a textile, but it is in fact made out of hundreds of bottle caps discarded by a Nigerian distillery, which Mr. Anatsui wove together with aluminum and copper wire. In the Met’s gallery, Mr. Anatsui and the museum staff experimented with different ways of attaching the piece to the wall, using delicate pins intended for mounting insects, to create a sculptural landscape of ridges and valleys.