For more than a hundred years, four niches on the front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York stood empty. In September 2019, they were filled for the first time, by four bronze figures of seated women created by the Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu. The sculptures, polished and regal, looked out over Fifth Avenue as if they had always belonged there. The work, called The NewOnes, will free Us, was the first commission for the museum’s facade, and it confirmed Mutu as one of the leading artists of her generation.
Early life and the collages
Mutu was born in Nairobi in 1972 and grew up in Kenya before moving abroad to study. She studied art and anthropology and earned a master’s degree in sculpture from Yale University in 2000. Mutu first became known for collages that combined magazine cutouts, paint and ink into strange, powerful female figures, part human, part animal, part machine.
Her work explores the female body, colonial history, ecology and the way African women have been represented in Western media. Over time she moved increasingly into sculpture, using bronze, soil, wood and other materials.
The Met and exhibitions
The NewOnes, will free Us consisted of four bronze figures, each set in one of the facade niches. The figures drew on traditions of caryatids, African royal regalia and Mutu’s own imagery. Critics praised the work as a bold statement about who belongs in the halls of great museums. Mutu has also made video works and performances, including collaborations with musicians.
Her work has been shown in major museums around the world. In 2023, the New Museum in New York held a large survey of her career.
Two cities and recognition
Mutu has a studio in Nairobi as well as in New York and divides her time between the two. Younger African artists cite her as an example of how to build an international career while keeping African themes at the centre. She has received many awards, and her works are held in public collections. Mutu has helped change who appears in the world’s leading museums, both as artists and as subjects.
The niches on the Met’s facade had been waiting for sculptures since the building was finished. The first figures to fill them were women made by an artist from Nairobi.
