You’ve probably never noticed the vacant sculpture-ready niches flanking the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s front doors. The Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu hadn’t either, until she was invited to be the first to fill them.

Inaugurating what will be an annual commission for the Met’s facade, Ms. Mutu is placing bronze statues of seated women in four of the niches, from Sept. 9 through Jan. 12. Crowned, blinded and gagged by highly polished discs, and born of traditions both European and African, these graceful, commanding figures will change the face of the museum, literally and figuratively. As a test run suggests, they will sometimes reflect sunlight with spooky intensity, in what Ms. Mutu calls “a stunning message from beyond.” It is testament to her belief that, like street theater or religious rituals, art can nudge viewers toward congregation.

The facade commission arrives in the run-up to the 150th anniversary next year of the Met’s founding, and heralds the commitment of Max Hollein, its director, “to expand and amplify dialogues with contemporary artists,” as he puts it.

Under Mr. Hollein’s leadership, the museum is announcing a turn toward the new and the global. Skepticism is not unwarranted, given the museum’s history. But the choice of an insistently transnational artist who, while acclaimed, is still not widely popular, and whose work is as dark as it is dazzling, does suggest the museum’s antennae are being retuned.