Every Two Years, Staffers at the Met Get to See Their Own Art on the Prestigious Museum’s Walls

Few artists are able to get work placed in prominent museums like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But for many years, the Met has been staging special exhibitions featuring an unexpected group of artists: its own staff.

Titled “Art Work: Artists Working at the Met,” this year’s show features more than 600 pieces—including paintings, etchings, ceramics, embroidery and digital art—made by 640 Met staffers, according to Hyperallergic’s Maya Pontone. The exhibition showcases work by staffers in a variety of roles, including security guards, technicians, librarians, designers and volunteers.

Christopher Fahey, a storeroom specialist who helps handle and install artworks and artifacts, tells the New York Post’s Raquel Laneri that hanging work by fellow staffers has been a job highlight.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he says. “We’re all getting a lot out of working here, but [the Met is] also getting a lot from artists working here.”

Fahey is a poet and mixed-media artist from Queens on top of his day job, per the New York Post. For the show, Fahey is displaying an intricate sculpture made out of a piece of redwood found in the trash. He’s been working on the piece for two years.

The Met has been staging exhibitions of staff art since 1935, and they usually take place every other year. “The show is designed, hung, presented and guarded by that same staff—some of the world’s best—who also design, hang, present and guard the 1.5 million works in its full collection,” writes the Financial Times’ Lilah Raptopoulos.

Historically, these shows haven’t been open to the public. But in 2022, the museum allowed any interested art lovers to see it for the very first time. This year is only the second time in history that “Art Work” is open to all museumgoers.

Daniel Kershaw, an exhibition design manager, tells Hyperallergic that the number of staff artworks on view has nearly doubled this year in comparison to previous years.

“Because of the amount of press that it got last time and the opportunity for the public to see it, everybody decided that they want to put something in,” he says. “It’s just a lot of fun.” Kershaw has an architectural model for a future exhibition on view in the show.

Amanda Rothschild, who works in the museum’s technology department, echoes this sentiment, saying that many Met staffers find connection through their art.

“There’s definitely a community around art in the museum that’s different from other places,” she tells Hyperallergic. The exhibition features one of Rothschild’s paintings: a retro image of a sink that she noticed in a Greenpoint coffee shop surrounded by cool blue tiles.

Some of the employee pieces are inspired by artifacts at the museum. Armia Malak Khalil, a senior security officer, has created a small sculpture inspired by Ushabti, ancient Egyptian statues that were placed in burials to help the deceased in the afterlife.

Khalil, who is from Egypt, immigrated to the United States in 2006. He also has a wooden bust on view in another exhibition at the Met, “Flight into Egypt.”

“It’s the first time one of us guards is in a major exhibit,” he tells the New York Post. “They’re all so proud of me.”

“Art Work: Artists Working at the Met” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through December 1.

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.