In the informative catalogue accompanying Jennie C. Jones's "Ensemble" (on the Met's roof), the artist talks about the inspiration behind her three large and elegant works, all acoustic sculptures based on string instruments-the trapezoidal zither, a tall Aeolian harp, and a doubled, leaning one-string. Jones has called the installation "site responsive," and it is something to see the vast green of Central Park below and the grand homes in audience of these sculptures gleaming in the sun, housed in a powerful institution but taking their inspiration from the life and work of little-known American musicians, such as the harpist Dorothy Ashby and the one-string musician Louis Dotson. Jones's deeply vibrant aluminum surfaces are suffused with the history of those who have been forgotten; they are also evidence of the artist's continuing interest in how sound connects with image.(Metropolitan Museum of Art; Through Oct. 19.)
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