Last Sunday, New York’s Metropolitan Opera celebrated not one, not two, but three openings. There was “Behind the Seams: Costuming the Met,” featuring more than 20 looks and pieces related to productions in the Met’s 2025–26 season, including Carmen, La Traviata, and Tristan und Isolde. (The exhibit can be viewed by Met ticketholders in the north and south galleries of Founders Hall, on the opera house’s Concourse level.)
There was also the company premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a new opera adapted from Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name, about two Jewish comic-book artists who invent a superhero to combat the rising threat of Nazism. And then, relatedly, there was the opening of Gallery Met’s “Super Duper,” another exhibition curated by Donatien Grau, the Louvre’s head of contemporary programs, and longtime Vogue contributing editor Dodie Kazanjian.
“Super Duper,” on view throughout the opera house, comprises new works by more than 20 contemporary artists—among them Roz Chast, George Condo, John Currin, Cy Gavin, Rashid Johnson, Toyin Ojih-Odutola, Anna Park, Nicolas Party, Julian Schnabel, Dana Schutz, Lorna Simpson, and Anna Weyant—each given the same brief: to consider what being a superhero means, or looks like, today. (The show’s only pre-existing artworks are two contributions by the legendary comic artist Art Spiegelman.)
Here, seven artists involved with the exhibition share their answer to the signal.
Joe Bradley
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