SPIN

Music, film, and art combined Wednesday night at New York City's Museum of Modern Art, where Metric performed with a string quartet to honor Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), the subject of a special exhibit at the Manhattan art Mecca.

The night kicked off with Bigelow's exhibit, which featured storyboards, scripts, filming schedules, location scouting reports, and casting notes, all from her films, including Point Break. A dinner followed with guests like Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, Anna Wintour, Edward Norton, and Ralph Fienes. Then, museum guests -- including Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Richard Reed Parry -- joined the after party, which Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner DJ'd.

Bigelow -- who will also be the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at MoMA in June 2011 -- then introduced singer Emily Haines and guitarist Jimmy Shaw, who played a four-song set with a string quartet.

SPIN contributing photog Kyle Dean Reinford filed these photos.

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Metric's versions of "Gold Guns Girls," "Help I'm Alive," and "Gimme Sympathy," all off their latest album Fantasies, became even more emotional with strings added.

The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow discusses her work.

"It sounded amazing," SPIN photog Kyle Dean Reinford says of the performance. "The set was short but the crowd knew every word and the sound was perfect. It was clear the band loved it as well."

The guitarist performed a DJ set at the after party.

The audience watches Metric in action.

So how did Metric get involved with Bigelow? It comes with Metric's ballooning popularity. "All of a sudden people are asking us to do really cool shit out of nowhere," Haines told SPIN.

With Haines on piano, the group played "Expecting to Fly," a Neil Young track from his Buffalo Springfield days.

Haines told SPIN that Metric are heading up to their hometown of Toronto to record new material, which the band finished during a recent writing session.