Wangechi Mutu features in TIME’s 28 Outstanding Women

Women everywhere pushed the world forward—and many made history, shattering long-standing glass ceilings to become 'firsts' in their fields. 

Wangechi Mutu

First artist to display works in the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 9

New York-based Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu became the first artist to display works in the façade of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in September, installing four sculptures into niches that have been empty since 1902. Mutu is known for her striking mixed-media Afrofuturistic compositions, which center the female experience and include elements of Western and African art and mythology. Her inaugural works for the Met’s façade—a set of four female bronze caryatids, larger than life and stylized in the tradition of high-ranking African women—challenge the institution’s own history of Eurocentrism and patriarchy.

Read more

Image: Artist Wangechi Mutu in her Brooklyn studio with models for her sculptures that were installed on the facade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, September 26, 2019.