Toward the end of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition examining ancient Egypt’s influence on Black artists, visitors will encounter an obelisk-like form – inverted, sheathed in reflective silver and appearing suspended, as if by light.
Designed by architects and artists Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers, faculty members in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, the installation titled “Pyramidion” explores obelisks’ role as geographical and political markers in Western urban centers – among them Cleopatra’s Needle, a nearly 3,500-year-old red granite slab standing nearby in Central Park. And it reflects the designers’ own experience visiting Egypt as a young family, which sparked the 2013 launch of their creative practice, Dream the Combine.
“It was inspiring to see what human beings can achieve on such an incredible scale and with such deep meaning,” said Newsom, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture. “Our time in Egypt was formative for us as practitioners, as creative people, as humans.”
Conceptual drawing of “Pyramidion.”
The work is one of nearly 200 featured in “Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now,” which opened Nov. 17 in The Met Fifth Avenue’s modern and contemporary wing and runs through Feb. 17. The exhibition investigates how Black artists have employed ancient Egyptian imagery to craft a unifying identity, the contributions of Black scholars to the study of ancient Egypt, and the engagement of modern and contemporary Egyptian artists with ancient Egypt.
Dream the Combine’s participation began with a conversation with the exhibition’s curator last year, while Newsom and Carruthers were fellows at the American Academy in Rome. There, and in cities including Istanbul, London (home to a twin Cleopatra’s Needle) and Paris, obelisks stand at major urban thoroughfares as symbols of wealth and power. But viewed differently, the designers said, they show African culture centered in, not absent from, the West.
“Here are these focal moments of urbanism where Africa is centered,” said Carruthers, assistant professor of the practice in the Department of Architecture. “It’s not something that needs to be created, but that can be seen to already be in place.”
“Pyramidion” – a term for the capstones of pyramids or obelisks – is an evolution of one of Dream the Combine’s first projects, “Make It Rain,” in Vancouver in 2014. On the base of a steam clock that had been removed for repairs, an obelisk of aluminized Mylar vented steam and reflected the sky, “a vulnerable body of seemingly immaterial parts,” the artists said.
Now occupying the corner of a museum gallery, the new piece is turned upside down so the reflective Mylar mirrors surrounding artworks and museum-goers. Kevlar lends structure to the nearly 16-foot-long, tapered cone that the designers call a “shroud,” which is suspended about 2 feet off the ground and topped by a crown of bronze rods.
“You have the physical reality of the thing, but also the images overlaid in the surface because of its reflective quality,” Newsom said. “It can look like this hard, metallic, shiny object, but is actually soft and moves like a fabric.”
Like ancient obelisks that were transported around the world, the shroud is weathered, displaying the crinkles and folds accumulated during its journey from a Vancouver fabrication site through The Met’s front doors – the only place it could fit. Carried in horizontally, the designers said its entrance recalled a funeral procession, or perhaps an Egyptian solar barque.
In addition to reflecting its environment, “Pyramidion” projects light down to the floor and up through its crown, whose seven ceiling attachment points describe the constellation Pleiades – used by ancient mariners to navigate the Mediterranean, and best viewed indirectly.
The square of light shining on the floor is proportional to Cleopatra’s Needle, commissioned by Thutmose III in 1475 B.C. and gifted to the United States by the Egyptian government in the 1870s. Suggesting an interior obelisk and inner life, the warm, yellow light references ancient Egyptians’ belief that people were transfigured as light when they died. And it embodies an observation by the artists’ then 2-year-old son, Ogden (named for Newsom’s late father), upon awakening in Cairo at the start of their Egypt trip in 2012: “It’s yellow out there,” he said.
“We’ve been meditating on generations on either side of our own,” Newsom said, “and talking about the piece as a kind of body-like vessel that connects across time.”
The artists said they’re excited to see how the public engages with the work and grateful for another opportunity to collaborate. The work connects to their creative origins, Carruthers said, while probing concerns with “renewed richness and relevance.”
“It’s going to have a real visual presence, just the particular metallic finish and how it captures light and shares it back,” Carruthers said. “I think it’s going to be pretty special.”
“Pyramidion” was made possible by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.
