THE ROOF GARDEN of The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers majestic, panoramic views of the New York City skyline. Each year, the museum selects an artist to create a rooftop installation that highlights their practice, engages with The Met collection, and responds to the picturesque outdoor space. The project provides the encyclopedic museum with a one-of-a-kind venue to showcase some of the world’s most thoughtful and compelling contemporary art.
The Met selected Jennie C. Jones for the 2025 Roof Garden Commission. Jones produces conceptual, sound-based works across painting, sculpture, and installation. Focusing on the intersection of music, art history, and Black creativity, she produces visual and aural experiences. The commission for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden will be her first multi-work outdoor sculptural installation.
Conceptual artist Jennie C. Jones works in a variety of mediums creating visual and aural experiences. Her acoustic paintings absorb sound and are graphic representations of music notations. | Jennie C. Jones, 2015. Photo by Jason Frank Rothenberg
Jones was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and lives and works in Hudson, N.Y. Her interdisciplinary practice draws connections between complex social and cultural histories, considering the exclusion of Black artists in the history of modernism and how the roots of avant-garde and experimental jazz parallel the foundational ideas of Minimalism and abstraction. Her work is represented in public and private collections and has been exhibited internationally. “Jennie C. Jones: Dynamics” was recently on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
For her commission at The Met, the museum said, “Jones will explore the sonic potential of stringed instruments as well as their formal possibilities. In Jones’s unique response to modernism, these acoustic sculptures propose the line of the string as a proxy for art history, unbroken and continuous.”
THE MET ESTABLISHED the Roof Garden Commission series in 2013 with Imran Qureshi as the inaugural artist. Dan Graham (2014), Cornelia Parker (2016), Adrián Villar Rojas (2017), Huma Bhabha (2018), and Alex Da Corte (2021) are among the other artists selected for the opportunity over the past decade.
Jones is the second African American artist to participate. Lauren Halsey was the first. Her extraordinary site-specific installation paying homage to her roots in South Central Los Angeles and the beauty and wonder of ancient Egyptian architecture was on view last year.
“Though stylistically different, both Jones and Gibson see the potential for beauty and form to carry the potency of individual and cultural histories.”
— Met Director and CEO Max Hollein
Jones’s 2025 Roof Garden Commission was announced in conjunction with news that Jeffrey Gibson will take on The Met Fifth Avenue facade commission in 2025. He will create new works for the architectural niches that grace the front of the museum building on Fifth Avenue. Later this year, Gibson is representing the United States at the 60th Venice Biennale with a solo show in the U.S. Pavilion. He is the first indigenous artist to do so. Born in Colorado, Gibson is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent.
Max Hollein, director and CEO of The Met described Jones and Gibson as “esteemed” artists and said the museum is “thrilled” about the 2025 commissions.
In a statement, he added: “Though stylistically different, both Jones and Gibson see the potential for beauty and form to carry the potency of individual and cultural histories. We’re honored to have them join this important commission series and look forward to unveiling their works in 2025.” CT
The Roof Garden Commission: Jennie C. Jones will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, from April 15-Oct. 19, 2025
FIND MORE about Jennie C. Jones on her website and Instagram
BOOKSHELF
A new volume, forthcoming in April, “Jennie C. Jones” offers a primer on the conceptual artist’s practice. “Jennie C. Jones: Compilation” documents her mid-career survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Houston. Edited by Valerie Cassel Oliver, the catalog includes essay contributions from Hilton Als, Huey Copeland, and George Lewis. The work of Jennie C. Jones is also featured in “Ground/work,” which documents the first outdoor exhibition at Clark Institute in Williamstown, Mass. The sculptural exhibition features six contemporary artists, including Jones. “Jefferey Gibson: This is the Day” and “Jefferey Gibson: Like a Hammer” explore the artist’s work. In addition, Jefferey Gibson edited “An Indigenous Presence,” the recently published, landmark volume explores the work of more than 60 Native North American artists working across a range of artistic disciplines, including music, film, dance, architecture, literature, photography, and design. “Lauren Halsey: The Roof Garden Commission” was published on the occasion of Lauren Halsey’s 2023 installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and includes an interview with the artist.
