The Met museum rooftop has been invaded by aliens

Publish date: 2024-05-08

The aliens have landed. Well, one of them has — and it’s on the Met’s roof.

Huma Bhabha’s installation, “We Come in Peace,” is this year’s museum-topper. If that title sounds familiar, it should: It’s straight out of the 1951 sci-fi classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Like all the rooftop works preceding it, “We Come in Peace” is open to interpretation.

The first figure, a totemic 12-foot-tall invader, has several crudely carved faces, some fiercer than others, though one has the stoic implacability of an Easter Island sculpture. Bhabha — a 56-year-old Poughkeepsie, NY, artist who was born in Pakistan and schooled at the Rhode Island School of Design and Columbia University — created the piece in Styrofoam, cork, clay and plaster, but had it cast in bronze to withstand New York’s crazy weather.

The same is true for her second figure, “Benaam” (from the Urdu, meaning “without name”). Covered in what looks like a black trash bag, this humanlike figure is 18 feet long and seems to be kneeling before the totem in what could be respect, religious supplication or abject fear.

Draw your own conclusions, perhaps aided by one of the museum’s themed $16 cocktails, be it Mortal Kombat (gin, lime juice, blackberry) or The Thing (rum, basil, lime juice).

But the headiest thing of all is being up on the Met’s roof at twilight, viewing anything against that glorious Central Park backdrop. Just think how nifty it will look on Instagram.

We Come in Peace” can be seen at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave., through Oct. 28, weather permitting. Admission: pay what you wish for New York state residents and tri-state area students; $25 others. Info at MetMuseum.org

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