Four giant hands now greet visitors to The Met. The Genesis Facade Commission: Liu Wei, Speculation fills the niches of the museum’s Fifth Avenue facade with four monumental sculptures centered on the form of a human hand — each about 16 feet tall, weighing around two tons, and crafted from composite fiberglass, steel, aluminum alloy and cowhide.
Each of the four works is titled after a fundamental physical constant — the cosmological constant, the gravitational constant, the speed of light and Planck’s constant — a concept developed with the Met’s contemporary art curator Leslie Ma. The installation is on view September 17, 2026 through June 8, 2027.
The commission is the third under the five-year Genesis–Met partnership established in 2024, following Lee Bul (2024) and Jeffrey Gibson (2025). It marks Beijing-based artist Liu Wei’s first major museum exhibition in the United States and The Met’s first commissioned work by an artist from China since 2006.
Best of all, the sculptures are free to enjoy: they can be seen outdoors at the museum’s Fifth Avenue facade during the Met’s standard hours — no ticket required.
Photo: Arad, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
