The Roof Garden Commission: The Theater of Disappearance

Known for his ephemeral, interconnected installations and monumental sculpture, Argentinian artist Adrián Villar Rojas (b. 1980) transformed The Met Roof into an immersive banquet scene for the 2017 Roof Garden Commission. This book retraces the artist’s process by illustrating his conversations and discoveries at The Met, which informed an installation that negotiates the museum as both a social space and a space for the display of art. Villar Rojas merges these institutional functions by framing art within the context of a party where viewers and artworks can directly interact. The publication, an integral part of Villar Rojas’s installation, covers themes as diverse as museology, history, and the activation of art—offering a meditation on how museums as artifacts represent and historicize art.