Met Museum Dance at Cloisters

The performance venue, The Met Cloisters, is a branch of the museum dedicated to medieval European art and architecture that opened in 1938. Located in Fort Tryon Park, its building incorporates architectural elements from five medieval French cloisters, purchased by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and reassembled in northern Manhattan. The connected exhibition, "Spectrum of Desire," runs through March 29, 2026, and re-examines the medieval period through a modern lens on love, sex, and gender. It features more than 50 works from the 13th to 15th centuries, including gold jewelry, ivory sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts drawn primarily from The Met's collection. Curated by Melanie Holcomb and Nancy Thebaut, the exhibit is grounded in decades of scholarship that challenges the perception of the Middle Ages as a period of rigid repression. The collection showcases how desire was expressed in forms that were "courtly or carnal, sacred or subversive." The performers, Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly, have collaborated as the duo Gerard & Kelly since 2003. Their work uses choreography, video, and sculpture to investigate themes of intimacy, memory, sexuality, and queer consciousness. Gerard & Kelly have previously exhibited and performed at institutions including the Guggenheim Museum, the New Museum, and the Palais de Tokyo. Their work often interrogates the "formation of the couple" and seeks to deconstruct dominant representations of romance and relationships in art.