Jennie C. Jones turns the museum’s skyline perch into a hushed score of strings, and once the music fades on October 19, the roof will go dark until the Met’s new modern wing opens in 2030.
Perched above Central Park, the Met’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden now hosts Ensemble, the 2025 Roof Garden Commission by Cincinnati-born artist Jennie C. Jones. The installation is Jones’s second work in the open air and the twelfth entry in the rooftop series. Three large-scale forms echo a trapezoidal zither, a soaring Aeolian harp, and a doubled, leaning one-string, each scaled to play with the skyline’s own rhythm.
Jones treats sound as material: taut cables stand in for musical notation, and industrial panels nod to acoustic fiberglass she uses in her canvases. Wind and weather, rather than performers, activate the piece, letting the city supply its score. By foregrounding Black avant-garde music and minimalist form, she questions the canon without raising her voice.
Ensemble opens just as the museum prepares to break ground on the Oscar L. Tang and H.M. Agnes Hsu-Tang Wing, the future home of modern and contemporary art. Construction will sideline the Roof Garden Commission until the wing and an expanded terrace debut in 2030. For regulars who timed every spring visit to the rooftop reveal, that timeline feels long; for newcomers, the pause makes this season’s show feel even more fleeting.
The installation runs from April 15 through October 19, 2025. Viewing is included with museum admission; arrive early on Friday or Saturday if sunset selfies are part of your plan, as evening hours stretch to 9 p.m. on those days.
