In 2027, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present the first major survey in New York City since 1995 of a major contemporary artist. Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Spaces Between is unlike traditional monographic presentations. The show is set to feature more than 40 of the artist’s works – in installation, painting, photography, sculpture and video – in locations across the Museum. The Met situates these works within their permanent collections, including those dedicated to ancient Egyptian art, medieval art, historic British interiors and American sculpture, among others. This unique display creates encounters that reflect the artist’s interest in circulation and dispersal, interaction and political engagement, and the threshold between public and private life. Max Hollein, Chief Executive Officer at The Met, says: “Felix Gonzalez-Torres is one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His installations transform ephemeral materials into enduring experiences that grapple with ideas such as time, loss and love. For the first presentation of the artist in New York City in over three decades, The Met will showcase his art throughout the Museum, in conversation with 5,000 years of human creativity.”
Born in Guáimaro, Cuba, in 1957, Gonzalez-Torres spent part of his early life abroad, briefly in Spain and then Puerto Rico, before settling in New York City in 1979. Here, his artistic career really began to flourish. From 1987 to 1994, he was a member of Group Material, the influential New York-based artists’ collective known for its politically engaged exhibitions and public projects. Members included names that are now seen as seminal in the conceptual art space, including Jenny Holzer, Julie Ault, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Hans Haacke. Their works vary in method and material but are united in a commitment to collective memory and documentation that profoundly influenced Gonzalez-Torres’ own practice as he came to prominence in the early 1990s. His artwork paid keen attention to contemporary social and political subjects, personal and collective grief and queer identity and lived experience.
As it did for many artists of his generation, the AIDS crisis profoundly shaped both the creation and reception of Gonzalez-Torres’ art. He created an open-ended work intended to endure and adapt beyond his lifetime. It is this spirit that truly comes through at Met, with displays that encourage viewers to participate directly. Untitled (Blood) (1992) allows audiences to pass through a curtain of red and clear bead strands that must be tailored to fit existing thresholds, whilst in Untitled (Placebo – landscape – for Roni) (1993), they’re free to take a piece from a vast spill of gold candies. Another piece prompts visitors to take sheets of printed paper from a towering stack. In doing so, they continually deplete the work: each visitor’s individual act of taking, combined with that of countless others, reshapes the work’s form, potentially producing its absence. For the piece to be replenished, it requires a decision from the gallery or owner. The openness of this interaction is essential, positioning the public and the exhibitors as collaborators who complete the work, ensuring that this creation would adapt to new contexts.
The exhibition’s title is drawn from a one-line fax Gonzalez-Torres sent to his friend and gallerist Andrea Rosen in May 1994: “I watch closely the spaces between the birds. E. Bishop.” It’s a quote from an early essay by the poet Elizabeth Bishop, in which she likens the spaces between birds to “the rest in music…not a blankness but a space as musical as all the sound.” Here, the core message of his work comes to the fore. The artist poses a handful of lasting questions: where the self ends and the social begins; what it means to own a work of art that can be depleted or given away and yet always returns; how notions of originality, value, ownership and authorship are perceived; and how an object as ordinary as a string of lights, a beaded curtain, a pair of clocks or a pile of candy can be weighted with memory.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The Spaces Between is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from 10 June – 18 October 2027: metmuseum.org
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1. Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled” (Placebo – Landscape – for Roni), 1993 (detail). © Estate of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.
2. Installation view, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Luis Barragán’s La Cuadra, Mexico City, Mexico, 2025. Courtesy of Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and La Cuadra, supported by Fundación Romero. Photo by Gerardo Landa & Eduardo Lopez – GLR Estudio. Courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and David Zwirner Gallery.
3. Installation view, Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Sweet Revenge, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain, 2026. Photo by Roberto Ruiz. Courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and David Zwirner Gallery.
4. Installation view, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Luis Barragán’s La Cuadra, Mexico City, Mexico, 2025. Courtesy of Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and La Cuadra, supported by Fundación Romero. Photo by Gerardo Landa & Eduardo Lopez – GLR Estudio. Courtesy Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and David Zwirner Gallery.
