Tomas Saraceno | Cloud City | Roof of the Metropolitan Museum Summer 2012
Cloud City is a shimmering, spacious delight that plays with space and gravity and takes you to a new place. What an adventure!
What do you see when you arrive at the roof? A very large structure with 
lots of angles mirroring the sky and everything around it — webs and frames recall a geodesic dome only all the geometries here are irregular. It defies any simple equations and seems freely morphing — like a kind of globular life. From some angles it rests calmly; from others it reaches out into space. There’s a paradox: it seems floating and immaterial even as you see with your eyes that it’s weighty and built and cabled to the roof and with a mighty base. It’s not just something to look at: those climbing in, around and above animate it with the vitality of life itself — sure-footed life that is (those who aren’t sure-footed are counseled to skip the climb).
But whether you climb or not, your reflection reaches its angled heights. Take a picture from below of your reflection up there, as in the photo on the left. Everyone who visits makes it to the clouds in one way or another. Everyone there becomes a citizen of Cloud City
Some facts: Cloud City was commissioned and made specifically for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s roof garden. It consists of 16 interconnected modules made of transparent and reflecting materials and – to give you a sense of scale — it’s 54 feet long, 29 feet wide and 28 feet high. While this Cloud Cities is site specific it’s part of a series of works by this Argentinian artist that suggest an ecological continuum between our world and space. It brings with it a sense of habitation, suggesting a sketchy vision of new and creative human environments, on earth and in space.
Buoyant ands gleaming, Cloud City lifts the heart and shines in the imagination.
Art on the roof – among the great treasures of Summer in NYC.
This is the 15th year the Metropolitan Museum has presented art on the roof. Last year it was Anthony Caro on the roof, the year before that Doug and Mike Starm’s site-specific Big Bambu.
Fun to know: Refreshments – sandwiches, snacks, desert, beverages including espresso, cappuccino, iced tea, soft drinks, wine and beer – are available at the little café on the Roof Garden daily from 10 am to closing (weather permitting). An “ARTini” bar is open on the Roof Garden Friday and Saturday evenings 5:39 – 8 pm.
Museum hours generally Fridays and Saturdays 9:30 am – 9 pm; Sundays, Tuesdays-Thursdays 9:30 am – 5:30 am.
For more information on visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Cloud City, on the Metropolitan Museum’s suggested admissions prices (what you pay is actually your option), and, if you wish, for requesting tickets for climbing in the structure, click on www.metmuseum.org/saraceno . Tickets for climbing up into the structure are timed and limited so if you think you want to do that, check the site and make your plans.
Cloud City is fascinating but that other city — NYC — seems even more fascinating … !
Did you get there? And what did you think … ? I’d love to know. Yvonne
We are actually planning of going there. My cousin has gone there and she said that the place is amazing. Maybe sometime soon we can also visit Cloud City and experience being on the roof of that stunning structure. That is indeed perfectly made and I know there will be thousands of people who will love to visit that place.
It is beautiful — and the Cloud City and Manhattan City really go together!
Oh my! It looks so exciting to see the structure yourself. I’m sure cloud/sky enthusiasts would love to be there. Argentinian artist Tomas Sarceno did a great job! The steel framed bubbles structure’s staircase would even take you to the view of the Manhattan skyline and Central Park.
Thats for sure — Interactive … for all ages!
I agree it is just a delight –it really lifts the sprit, at least for me for it has all the feeling that of childhood discovery. This joy was observed as a youngster – 3 or 4 years old – had crawled into to one of the spaces at the bottom of the edifice and was enjoying all the mirror images. His mother had a task to coax him out while the nearby museum officials were obviously quite agitated.