This weekend, we finally made our way to New York to see Doug and Mike Starn’s Big Bambú exhibit at the Met.
It was delightful.
The Starn brothers teamed up with rock climbers to build a massive, wave-like structure on the roof of the Met, consisting entirely of bamboo and climbing rope – thousands of stalks of bamboo, and miles upon miles of rope. The structure allows plenty of space for visitors to the roof to wander beneath it, looking upward through the maze of bamboo, but pathways, ramps and stairs have been built to allow guests on guided tours to climb around inside, 45 feet above the rooftop.
Despite Jack’s burning desire to climb off the pathways, we stayed with the group. It was definitely worth taking the extra time to secure group tour tickets (lines form about an hour prior to ticket release); seeing it from below is very neat, but the experience is heightened by feeling the simultaneous give and rigidity of the bamboo beneath your feet.
Big Bambú will remain open to the public (weather permitting) until October 31st, and climbers will continue weekday construction until that point as well. No two visits to the exhibit are ever the same.
For more images of the piece, check out the Met’s Flickr stream documenting the construction and transformation of the piece since March – they have some fantastic shots of the climbers at work. For more background on Doug and Mike Starn’s work with bamboo, see their studio site.
