As museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art continue to address accusations of improperly acquired artifacts, the museum’s façade commission of Hew Locke’s ‘Gilt’ is both appropriate and daringly self-critical. Locke explains that his cast fiberglass sculptures, gilt to resemble valuable artworks, are a pun on ‘guilt’ and a prompt to consider how the objects in the museum have been gathered to satisfy our pleasure. While a creature at the base of the vessel literally devours it, eyes at the top look on in witness and a figure inspired by an 8th century BCE ivory in the Met’s permanent collection ironically brings tribute to the Assyrian Empire. (On view on the Met’s façade through May 30th, 2023).
