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The museum and the artists’ foundation are working together on a surprising exhibition that opens in June.
In a daring crossover, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the sleek works of 20th-century Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti at the ancient Egyptian temple of Dendur this summer.
Made possible by a loan from Paris-based Fondation Giacometti, Giacometti in the Temple of Dendur will exhibit 17 of the artist’s sculptures in and around the Roman-era temple from the first century BC. The late artist’s foundation will loan fourteen works for the exhibition, and the Met will contribute three works from its own collection.
The temple honors the Egyptian goddess Isis, a deity associated with motherhood, magic and healing, and her two brothers. The majority of the seventeen Giacometti sculptures in the upcoming exhibition feature female figures, including the pre-war bronze statue from 1932.Femme qui marche I (Woman walks)” and the 1956 “Femme de Venise I (Woman of Venice).” The sculptures, reminiscent of the skinny Ancient Egyptian figures etched into the structure, range in height from just 10 inches (27.9 cm) to over 8 feet (2.5 meters) high.
In an exhibition announcement, Fondation Giacometti curator Emilie Bouvard explained that the figurative sculptor was drawn to ancient Egyptian art from an early age.
“Egyptian art was both naturalistic and highly symbolic, resonating with his constant search for both monumentality and humanity,” Bouvard said. “The opportunity to present his work in a setting of such profound historical and architectural significance offers a rare and compelling perspective on his oeuvre.”
Giacometti frequently encountered Egyptian sculpture during visits to the Louvre during his early adulthood, shortly after moving to Paris in 1922, according to The Meet. Throughout his life, the artist acquired books on Egyptian art, and his sketchbooks from the 1920s and 1930s suggest that these ancient models influenced his expressive walking figures, the museum said.
The museum hopes that placing its sculptures around and within the Temple of Dendur will lead to a better understanding of the structure as “a living sacred environment,” Associate Curator of Egyptian Art Aude Semat said in a press release.
“The installation foregrounds the original spatial and symbolic functions of the temple while opening a dialogue across millennia on how sculpture mediates presence and belief,” said Semat.
The temple became one of the museum’s most iconic exhibits after Egypt donated it to the United States in 1965 as an expression of gratitude for U.S.-backed efforts to preserve it after the local government built a dam on the Nile that threatened to flood the site.
The Met officially acquired the structure in 1967 and reconstructed the temple stone by stone in the museum’s Sackler Wing, which opened to the public in 1978. The institution later removed the Sackler family name from its exhibit space in Dendur following protests over the role that Purdue Pharma, founded by Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, played in the opioid epidemic.
Giacometti was born in 1901 and raised in Switzerland by his father, the impressionist painter Giovanni Giacometti. In his late 20s, he joined the Surrealism movement, but abandoned the style in 1935. Before World War II, the sculptor focused on small-scale works, eventually evolving his practice to create his famous tall, slender figures in the post-war period.
“Giacometti continually returned to the question of how to imbue his work with the experience of being human,” Met curator of modern art and senior research coordinator Stephanie D’Alessandro said in the release. “His sculptures, seen in and around the Temple of Dendur, sharpen our understanding of his lifelong effort to distill the human presence into its most essential form.”
The exhibition opens on June 12 and runs until September 8.
