Hirst's Shark on View at The Met

Damien Hirst's "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," a shark in a tank of formaldehyde, is on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by controversial British artist Damien Hirst (b. 1965) went on view for three years at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art on October 16, 2007. The 20-ton conceptual work, a 13-foot tiger shark in a steel-and-glass tank of formaldehyde, is located on the second floor of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing for Modern and Contemporary Art, overlooking Central Park. It's on loan from The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Collection. Mr. Cohen purchased the work for $8 million (US). This sculpture and Hirst's other tank pieces, with dead animals preserved in formaldehyde, encourage the viewer to confront the finite nature of all living things, a sort of modern memento mori.

Hirst's large artwork in the Lila Acheson Wallace Gallery is accompanied by Watson and the Shark (ca. 1778) by John Singleton Copley, Gulf Stream (1899) by Winslow Homer and Head I (1947-48) by Francis Bacon.