Celebrated Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas is known for his site-specific sculptural installations. For The Theater of Disappearance, the artist mines The Met’s collection, drawing on the five thousand years of world history within its galleries, to create an elaborate ahistorical work. Set atop the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, Villar Rojas’s installation transforms the space into a performative diorama, where banquet tables occupy an oversize black-and-white checkerboard floor punctuated by sculptures that fuse together human figures and artifacts found within the museum. The resulting juxtapositions put forth a radical reinterpretation of museum practices. This illustrated book is the fifth edition in a series that documents and contextualizes The Met’s annual rooftop commissions. The introductory essay by Beatrice Galilee explores the conceptual framework that informs Villar Rojas’s remarkable commission as well as his interventions around the world. While exploring the Museum, Villar Rojas took thousands of photographs of objects and moments of interest. A selection of these images is featured here alongside the artist’s commentary, offering a unique visual diary of Villar Rojas’s thought process as he developed this arresting installation.

"This catalogue is published in conjunction with "The Roof Garden Commission: Imran Qureshi" on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from May 14 through November 3, 2013."

Dan Graham’s commissioned installation for the roof garden of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as his previous related site-specific architectural works, is the focus of this fascinating publication.

The British artist Cornelia Parker is known for her large, site-specific installations. Often composed of ordinary objects, her works makes the familiar extraordinary, whimsical, and even poignant. Her new project, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), conceived and created for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, merges two iconic examples of American architecture, the red barn and the infamous mansion on a hill from Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Psycho (itself inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper). The work meditates on the tension between these iconic structures and subtly suggests how architecture generates conflicting emotional states. This beautifully illustrated book is the forth in a series that documents and contextualizes The Met's annual rooftop commissions. The introductory essay by Beatrice Galilee follows the process of crafting this work, tracing the myriad psychological associations that are embedded in architectural spaces, The interview between the artist and Sheena Wagstaff provides an insightful discussion of Parker's wide-ranging career and explores the conceptual framework that informs her remarkable commission.

This is the inaugural exhibition of the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission series, which invites leading international artists to create site-specific installations at the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Gallery, made possible by a gift from the family of Ng Teng Fong. Published to accompany this exhibition, this catalogue delves deeper into Danh’s practice and broader discussions surrounding cross-cultural identity through essays by leading scholar Professor Nora Taylor and National Gallery Singapore curator Charmaine Toh alongside full-colour images of the commissioned work.

The work of Mexican artist Héctor Zamora engages with urban or built environments, both disrupting and rearticulating the viewer’s interaction with the site. Lattice Detour, his most recent intervention, commissioned by The Met for its Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, is fabricated from terracotta bricks produced in Mexico and transported to New York. This compact volume, the first book in English on Zamora, presents images and analysis of the new artwork, setting its creation in the context of his past work. An interview with Zamora sheds further light on his formation as an artist, his process, and his inspirations.

The work of Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade is elegant, rigorous, and highly experiential. With equal parts poetry and critical acumen, Kwade creates sculptures and installations that reflect on time, perception, and scientific inquiry, calling into question the systems designed to make sense of the universe. Ultimately, she seeks to draw out the mystery and absurdity of the human condition, heightening our powers of self-reflection. For The Met, Kwade has created ParaPivot I and II, a pair of sculptures with nine massive stone spheres floating in apparent weightlessness in large, intersecting steel frames. This sculptural ballet evokes a miniature solar system, a piece of space that has settled temporarily on the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. This book, the first on Kwade’s work published in the United States, includes an insightful essay on her practice by curator Kelly Baum and a revealing interview with the artist by Sheena Wagstaff. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}

It’s been more than forty years since the second edition of this landmark guide to the preservation and restoration of gardens and landscapes at historic sites was published. Since the last edition came out, author Rudy Favretti, the nation’s foremost authority in this area, has worked on many significant sites including both Monticello and Mount Vernon. New to this edition are: Personal case studies from the authors’ extensive experience in landscape restoration-preservation An in-depth look complete with color images of the archaeological excavations at Bacon’s Castle and Monticello in Virginia Seventy-three illustrations including eight color photos An enlarged and comprehensive bibliography Fully updated and added chapters based on new and emerging information in the field Further, Landscape and Gardens for Historic Buildings covers a wide array of topics including researching and planning, maintaining restored landscapes, identifying authentic flora, and selecting the right historical period, or a series of periods to show the evolution of the historic landscape.