Genesis announced that Beijing-based artist Liu Wei has been selected for The Genesis Facade Commission in 2026, a multi-year partnership with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Genesis Facade Commission: Liu Wei will be on view from September 17, 2026 through June 8, 2027.
Liu Wei is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans through painting, video, sculpture, and installation. Known for his virtuosic command of sites and scale, he reconfigures fragments from the urban environment, historical sources, and bodily forms to create sculptural installations that evoke awe and agitation.
For the third exhibition of The Genesis Facade Commission, Liu’s new works for the niches will play with perspective and scale and address cycles of rupture, resistance, mending, and creating in history. Instead of a totalizing narrative, Liu will present composite sculptures made with a variety of materials that provoke complex feelings and reactions amid uncertainties in contemporary life.
“We are delighted to support Liu Wei as the third artist for The Genesis Facade Commission under the multi-year partnership with The Met,” said DooEun Choi, Art Director of Hyundai Motor. “We hope his extensive practices will set the moments of reflection and challenge our perspectives on the world around us.”
“Liu Wei’s sculptures for The Genesis Facade Commission are sure to reflect the curiosity, innovation—and even humor—he is known for,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “We are honored to work with Liu Wei to expand the possibilities of the iconic Fifth Avenue facade in his first major project at an American institution.”
“For this commission, Liu Wei will use his dynamic language of reconfiguration and assemblage to address the conflicts and contradictions in society,” said Lesley Ma, Ming Chu Hsu and Daniel Xu Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Met and curator of the project. “For me, his work always compellingly pierce through perceptions of reality with a blend of rawness and refinement. I look forward to seeing how he challenges our expectations for the classical niches and for public sculptures.”
“To dialogue with the tremendous legacy of human civilization through The Met’s Genesis Facade Commission makes me so excited and anxious,” said Liu Wei. “What a challenge and a blessing.”
Initiated in 2024, The Genesis Facade Commission is an annual exhibition that builds upon the Museum’s contemporary art commissions on the Fifth Avenue facade since 2019. Each year, one artist is invited to create new site-specific works of art, inspiring authentic engagement between the artist, The Met’s audience, and the broader global art world.