Inside Job
An Exhibit of Staff Artwork at the Met
If you’re a fellow New Yorker, or will be visiting the city for Thanksgiving next week, I strongly urge you to go to see the current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art of artwork by members of the museum staff. It’s listed on their website—the twenty-first exhibit down the page, with no photo or illustration at all, and as far as I can tell they’ve publicized it not one bit. I only found out about it because the last time I went to the Met I happened to run into a guard I know who used to be a fellow cartoonist, and he mentioned it to me. It’s only up for two weeks. From the way the Met’s treating it, you’d think it was the equivalent of your kid’s macaroni art taped up on the fridge door, but I just went today, and it’s astonishing—the most enjoyable exhibition I’ve seen in recent memory. If I’d known how big it was, I would’ve budgeted my attention differently going in. It’s a little overwhelming; the show fills three or four big galleries, and there’s so much great work in it—paintings and drawings and etchings and textiles, photographs, collages, plaster and ceramics, assemblages and costumes, digital art, video art, neon, taxidermy. (And it’s artfully curated, as well—you’ll see some of its visual echoes and thematic juxtapositions in my photos below.) I suppose it should come as no surprise that people who end up working at the Met in any capacity should have creative inclinations, but even so, I was truly impressed to see that security guards, conservators, photographers, administrators, and servers in the museum cafés are all such inspired, talented, and disciplined artists. I’ve been at the Met wearing a dark suit, waiting for a friend—looking, at an indifferent glance, like a security guard—and people have approached me and demanded peremptorily, without a please or excuse me: “Where are the bathrooms?” It makes you want to approach not just museum guards but everyone you meet in the course of your daily errands, in whatever capacity, with tentative, provisional respect. You never know: that nanny or custodian or unemployable weirdo might be another Vivian Maier, a Henry Darger, a Van Gogh.
The show’s only up until December 1st.
I want to live in a world where all artists get such an opportunity to showcase their passions. This is incredible!
This is magnificent! Thanks for bringing people like me (who won't get to see this Met exhibit) along on your walk through these galleries. So much talent and creativity surfaced through this exhibit.