The mission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially “the Met”, is an encyclopedic collection from around the world. It is a global fantasy of total knowledge and the illusion of unity is produced by the uneven geography and the appropriation of colonial artifacts from other places. It collects exhibitions from cultures outside America but fails to recollect the trajectory of these artifacts. It celebrates artifacts from other geography but ignores the indigenous American Art.
Three families of architectural interventions are introduced to disrupt the colonial syntax of the Encyclopedia. The new families—nests, valleys, and yards with distorted shapes—punctuate the antiquated floors and facades and soften the orthogonal wall systems of the Met.
Valleys and nests absorb archives of colonial memory. The valleys recollect and demonstrate the trajectory of artifacts from another geography inside the Met through photography. The nests of media tower recollect colonial history in the central park and a wider range in metropolitan New York through multimedia. The yards exhibit indigenous American art to reemphasize its importance. To achieve this, staff from the Time-based media art working group and photography conservation department would work closely with each other.
