Afterlives: Contemporary Art in the Byzantine Crypt

At the Met Museum, *Afterlives: Contemporary Art in the Byzantine Crypt* places recent works in dialogue with the museum’s medieval setting below street level. The exhibition uses the crypt’s architecture, shadows, and proximity to sacred objects to ask how images survive, change, and circulate across time. In New York, where contemporary art is often shown in neutral white rooms, the Met’s ecclesiastical space shifts the terms of attention and interpretation. The result is a pointed reminder that context is never passive, even in a museum.