Exactly 60 years ago, the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti passed away. His sculptures, which became one of the most recognizable symbols of modern sculpture, reshaped the way we think about the human figure.

Giacometti was already a successful artist in his lifetime, but over the past decade and a half the value of his works has soared, and some of his sculptures have sold for more than $100 million. His human figures, thin, elongated, and fragile, became his signature, but for him they were never just a style. They were his way of exploring one of the questions that occupied him throughout his life: what is human representation? And yet his figures were given no identifying features. They belong to no age, social class, or ethnicity. They are universal, timeless, and manage to represent the human being as such.

About two weeks ago, one of the most intriguing exhibitions of the summer opened at the Metropolitan Museum in New York: 17 Giacometti sculptures installed inside and around the Temple of Dendur, one of the museum's most impressive spaces.

The choice is not accidental.

Giacometti's sculptural language was born, to a large extent, out of a deep familiarity with ancient Egyptian art. When he arrived in Paris in the 1920s, he spent long hours in the Egyptian galleries of the Louvre. His drawings and studies from that period show an ongoing engagement with the way the Egyptians depicted the human body: monumental, symbolic figures that are at the same time full of human presence.

Now, inside an Egyptian temple from the first century BCE, stand 17 of Giacometti's works, among them Woman Walking (1932) and sculptures from the Women of Venice series (1956). His elongated figures face the figures carved into the temple's stone, and a fascinating dialogue emerges between two artistic worlds thousands of years apart, both engaged with the same basic question: how do we represent the human being.

As the curator of the Giacometti Foundation in Paris put it:
"Egyptian art resonated with Giacometti's constant search for monumentality and humanity at once."

This is not just an exhibition of sculptures. It is an experience of space, light, and scale, in which every movement of the visitor changes the relationship between the works and the temple.

Even if you have visited the Met before, this is a rare opportunity to see one of its most iconic spaces from a new angle.

📍 The Met Fifth Avenue, New York
📅 Through September 8, 2026