• The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s latest brand collaboration is a Claude Monet Lego set. 
• The $249.99 kit recreates Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies using 3,179 interlocking plastic bricks. 
• The museum hopes to teach Lego fans about the artist, and is launching an accompanying podcast starring curator Alison Hokanson. 

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is teaming up with Lego on the latest entry in the Danish toy company’s Lego Art sets, featuring Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies, the 1889 masterpiece by French Impressionist Claude Monet.

“They really set themselves up for a challenge, because there’s aspects of the Impressionist technique that don’t necessarily lend themselves to being translated into small Lego pieces,” said Alison Hokanson, a European paintings curator at the Met who specializes in 19th- and early 20th-century central and Northern European art. She was blown away by the final product, which faithfully translates Monet’s vision in Lego form.

Claude Monet, Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899). Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929.

The kit, which will go on sale March 4, features an intimidating 3,179 pieces, and is priced at $249.99—the most expensive entry in the series to date. The Lego art series kicked off in 2020 with a Lego copy of the famed Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe silkscreen, and also includes a version of Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers, designed in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

This is Lego’s first official Monet offering, although the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, a noted Lego enthusiast, previously recreated the artist’s monumental Water Lilies triptych entirely out of Lego, using an astonishing 650,000-plus pieces. The toy company and the Met worked together to pick a fan favorite work from the collection that would delight art lovers and Lego enthusiasts alike when translated into the interlocking plastic brick system.

The new Lego Art set at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art with the painting that inspired it, Claude Monet’s Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899). Photo courtesy of Lego.

Coming up with the final product was a complicated process that took over a year. Lego designers visited the museum to see the original in person, rather than having to rely on reproductions, and Met staffers traveled to Denmark to review different drafts.

“The team meticulously created a tactile 3D surface by layering tiles and plates in both vertical and horizontal directions, mimicking the brushwork and carefully adapting Monet’s subtle palette of hues within Lego’s signature color options,” Lego designer Stijn Oom said in a statement.

A detail shot of Lego’s new set inspired by Claude Monet’s Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies. Photo courtesy of Lego.

“Reimagining the nuance of the original work in Lego bricks required certain elements of the work to be abstracted, all while preserving essential details of the composition to evoke Monet’s signature artistic style, he added. “The build transforms with viewing distance: individual pixels and textures are visible up close, resolving into a peaceful Impressionist landscape from afar, mirroring the nature of Monet’s later works.”

Hokanson was particularly impressed with the unusual Lego parts that were repurposed in the set, including tiny cherry pairs and whimsical frog elements that form part of the painting’s lily pads.

A detail shot of Lego’s new set inspired by Claude Monet’s Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies. Photo courtesy of Lego.

“I think it’s a nice reference not only to this association that we have with frogs and ponds, but also to Monet’s early work,” she said. “Some of his most famous early, Impressionist works are of La Grenouillère, which is literally the frog pool.”

The Met hopes the Lego set will boost its efforts to bring its collection to life for kids and families. It’s meant to make the white cube, which might traditionally feel formal and unwelcoming, engaging, and also to teach Lego lovers a little bit about art history. The Met has included a booklet about Monet’s life and career, and is releasing a podcast by Hokanson on March 1 that offers more information about the artist.