Tour the 'Psycho' House Replica on the Rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The art installation is open to the public through October.

ByABC News
April 21, 2016, 2:47 PM

— -- A new, spooky addition to the New York City skyline is on display on the rooftop garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The nearly 30-foot high installation, titled "Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)," is a replica of the Bates house made famous in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller "Psycho."

PHOTO: Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), a large-scale sculpture by acclaimed British artist Cornelia Parker, is on view now atop the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), a large-scale sculpture by acclaimed British artist Cornelia Parker, is on view now atop the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The temporary sculpture, designed by British artist Cornelia Parker, is made entirely of materials from a more than 100-year-old dairy barn in upstate New York. Parker was inspired to create the installation after seeing the same Edward Hopper painting, "House by the Railroad," that inspired Hitchcock's design of the "Psycho" house.

"She’s really fascinated in American culture and she wanted to look at all different references in American architecture and American culture," the exhibition's curator, Beatrice Galilee, told ABC News of Parker. "She started with a red barn, which is one of the kind of most archetypal American rural systems, and then on the other side of the spectrum, the cinematic iconic house ... from ‘Psycho.’"

PHOTO: Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), a large-scale sculpture by acclaimed British artist Cornelia Parker, is on view now atop the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Transitional Object (PsychoBarn), a large-scale sculpture by acclaimed British artist Cornelia Parker, is on view now atop the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Galilee worked side-by-side with Parker on the year-long process of designing and constructing the installation, which is actually just a set supported by scaffolding.

“It’s really just simply a flat structure, exactly as Hitchcock made in 1960 for the film,” Galilee said. “We looked very closely at all aspects of the set to try and understand how they built it for the film and replicate every part of that.”

The Met's rooftop garden has been used to display contemporary art for the past 19 years. "PsychoBarn" will remain open to the public through Oct. 31, 2016.

Watch the video above for Galilee's full tour of "PsychoBarn."