The Great Hall Commission: Tong Yang-Tze

For the 2024 Great Hall Commission, Taiwanese artist Tong Yang-Tze (born 1942, Shanghai, based in Taipei) will create two monumental works of Chinese calligraphy for the Museum's historic space. Her project will be the third in the series of commissions for The Met’s Great Hall and the artist's first major project in the United States.

Taipei-based Tong is one of the most celebrated artists working exclusively in Chinese calligraphy today. Best known for making calligraphy in monumental scale, Tong brings Chinese characters into dialogue with three-dimensional space and pushes the conceptual and compositional boundaries of the art form, while remaining dedicated to calligraphy’s raison d’être as the art of writing. Her commitment to the written characters is rooted in her belief in its centrality in Chinese cultural identity and calligraphy’s capacity for visual, emotional, and social impact beyond linguistic barriers. Working on the floor, she manipulates the movement and tension in the brushstrokes, the foremost quality in calligraphy. The oversized characters pose physical, formal, and conceptual challenges, while they offer new compositional possibilities and viewing experience.

The Great Hall Commission is part of The Met’s series of contemporary commissions in which the Museum invites artists to create new works of art, establishing a dialogue between the artist's practice, The Met collection, the physical Museum, and The Met's audiences.

Credit: Overview from museum website