Lauren Rosati

Documenting Jennie C. Jones’s multisensory site-specific artwork, this volume highlights her inspirations—from Minimalism and Modernism to avant-garde music Multimedia artist Jennie C. Jones draws on the aesthetics of minimalism and the improvisational qualities of avant-garde music to consider the sonic potential of abstraction. This volume, the latest in The Met’s Roof Garden Commission series, documents Jones’s dynamic installation. It features a trio of sculptural forms based on stringed instruments—a zither, a one-string, and an Aeolian harp—joined by a floor-based work that serves as the “conductor” of this ensemble. Full of sonic possibility, the sculptures sit quietly until they are played by the movement of the wind. An essay situates Ensemble within the artist’s larger practice and an interview with Jones conducted by Glenn Ligon charts the development of the commission, connects her site-responsive work to the collection and architecture of The Met, and explores the artist’s unique engagement with sound and visual abstraction. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (April 15–October 19, 2025)

The first publication on the painting practice of artist Lorna Simpson, whose work combines abstraction and figuration to highlight complexities of memory and representation This revelatory first look at the paintings of Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), an artist who has worked primarily as a photographer for much of her career, examines this significant new development in her practice over the last decade. Simpson’s recent works, midway between photography and painting, advance her incisive explorations of gender, race, and history through bodies that emerge and disappear—peering from inky surfaces or dissolving into landscapes of melting ice. Her paintings draw on documentary photographs and images from vintage Ebony and Jet magazines, combining screen-printed collages of found images with washes of colorful ink on fiberglass, wood, or clayboard. The texts in this volume explore how Simpson’s fascination with time, memory, and the indeterminacy of representation propels her experiments in works that are both figurative and abstract, portraits and landscapes, paintings and photographs. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition Schedule: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (May 19–November 2, 2025)