Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Tucked behind the Greek and Roman wing of America\u2019s biggest museum, a man is running around, cursing how few power outlets there are in the gallery. He\u2019s surrounded by approximately 641 pieces of art, precariously perched on tables or leaning against walls. Right now he\u2019s holding a giant papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 head made of museum brochures, trying to create order out of chaos.\u201cI\u2019m going to keep a bunch of these water scenes together,\u201d he says, standing in front of a smattering of paintings of lakes, seas and one of a filled sink. He keeps walking. \u201cI thought portraits should go here,\u201d he points. \u201cAnd the nudes here.\u201d He wanders away, muttering, \u201cJust way more digital art than I expected! I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do about the outlets!\u201dWe pass a diorama that presents a Lego rendering of \u201cStarry Night\u201d behind a fabric sandwich. \u201cA lot of mediums,\u201d I say. He\u2019s already halfway down the gallery. \u201cThe variety\u2019s what\u2019s so cool about it!\u201d he yells over his shoulder. \u201cIt\u2019s just endless!\u201d Then he stops in front of a small statue. \u201cI\u2019m not sure what this is, I think a used salad dressing bottle?\u201d He takes a sniff and continues on. \u201cPungent smell.\u201dThe man is Daniel Kershaw, senior exhibition designer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This show is unlike any other under his purview. It\u2019s the employee show, Art Work: Artists Working at the Met, which has been running approximately every other year since at least 1935. This year, for the second time in its history, it\u2019s open to the public.The Met employee art show may be one of the best-kept secrets in New York, a city that\u2019s running out of secrets. Any staff member can submit one piece of art and, as far as Kershaw remembers, nothing has been refused. The show is designed, hung, presented and guarded by that same staff \u2014 some of the world\u2019s best \u2014 who also design, hang, present and guard the 1.5 million works in its full collection, including \u201cThe Death of Socrates\u201d, Monet\u2019s water lilies, tools that may be 700,000 years old and a reliquary said to contain Mary Magdalene\u2019s tooth.I\u2019m here to witness the pre-show flurry, as employees submit their works for Kershaw to arrange. I watch as hundreds of museum guards, conservators, art handlers, technicians, curators, masons, interns and cleaners find safe corners to drop objects big and small. There\u2019s a long stuffed Furby in a straw hat, painting itself on a tiny canvas (an ode to Van Gogh\u2019s 1887 self-portrait, which sits upstairs). There\u2019s a giant wooden wrench, by a technician who usually submits giant soup spoons. There\u2019s a painting of clams that\u2019s still wet.A large percentage of the Met\u2019s staff make creative work. Senior security manager Lambert Fernando estimates that 75 per cent of the guards are artists of one sort or another. \u201cAnd they\u2019re with the art all day!\u201d he says. \u201cThey protect it. They\u2019re really its guardians. When you\u2019re with the art like that, it seeps into your brain, and comes out as some pretty wild stuff.\u201dFernando gestures to his own submission, a small, naked, baby-bodied figurine of Donald Trump, augmented by clay, which sits inside a bell jar to be safely observed. He wanted to make something \u201cuncannily or uncomfortably realistic\u201d. I assure him it\u2019s both.As I wander with Kershaw, a security guard sets down a tiny bust in a box, an intricately carved sculpture of a man that looks like him. \u201cCan you be careful with this?\u201d he asks. \u201cOh yes!\u201d Kershaw says. \u201cWhat is it made of?\u201d\u201cSoap,\u201d he says.The guard\u2019s name is Dave Gluzman. I ask about his art. He speaks English slowly. \u201cI just removed anything extra, and it became this,\u201d he says. \u201cHis name is Isaiah.\u201dI ask what the piece means to him, and he smiles shyly. \u201cJust soap.\u201dAnother guard, Nanette Villanueva, unrolls her canvas to reveal a stunning collage. It\u2019s an indoor scene of everyday items: hangers, sneakers, clutter, a coffee machine. She explains that the piece is made to feel like a puzzle that doesn\u2019t quite fit, \u201cbits of memory caught in a daydream\u201d.Villanueva has been at the Met for 28 years. Like much of the staff, she exhibits her work around the world. She and some colleagues have their work on show now in a small gallery in SoHo, called 201@105. A handful of Met employees have been in the Whitney Biennial.I watch as hundreds of museum guards, conservators, art handlers, technicians, curators, masons, interns and cleaners find corners to drop objects big and small It\u2019s a difficult fact to confirm, but many of the museum\u2019s experts agree that this may be the biggest representation of living artists in a major museum in the US. (This year\u2019s Whitney Biennial, in comparison, had 71.) \u201cYou get a slice of what New York artists are up to now that you don\u2019t see anywhere else,\u201d Kershaw says, who\u2019s been designing the exhibit for about 35 years. And because it contains all this life, he has relentlessly, in his words, \u201cannoyed one director after another\u201d to let him open it to the public. They wouldn\u2019t; one worried that visitors might confuse the art for part of the museum\u2019s collection. But finally, in 2022, the Met\u2019s newest director, Max Hollein, agreed. This year, participation exploded, with more submissions than ever before.The room hums. Dan McCallister works in the security command centre. His childhood BMX bike stands in the middle of the floor, a Diamondback he\u2019s replaced so many parts of that only the ghost of the original bike remains. It\u2019s on display because \u201cI have kids and a job and can\u2019t crash any more\u201d.Michael Greenberger, a copyist who helped co-ordinate the museum\u2019s copyist programme for years, has submitted an almost exact replica of \u201cThe Declaration of Love\u201d by Jean Fran\u00e7ois de Troy, except the central female figure is painted over in electric blue. I tell him I love seeing the object of desire removed from an 18th-century painting. It changes the entire painting. \u201cYes!\u201d He says. \u201cThe simplification helps people understand art. It somehow makes it more interesting.\u201dThe staff show is one of 13 projects Kershaw is designing at the museum, and one night he brings me to another: the unveiling of a vast three-part Tiffany Stained-Glass Window he helped to install in the American Wing\u2019s permanent collection. This acquisition was made possible by a long paragraph of donors, and he sweeps me through the medieval wing to attend a champagne toast. On the way, he calls to a man rolling a garbage cart down the hall.\u201cAre you submitting a piece this year?\u201d\u201cYes!\u201d the man calls back.Kershaw tells me this man submitted a fascinating found-art lamp once, which was an homage to Duchamp. \u201cYou just don\u2019t know who someone is based on their art!\u201d he cries with joy, and we enter the American Wing and each take a champagne coupe.I watch Hollein congratulate everyone involved in the window, a 1912 opalescent glass masterpiece more than 10 feet wide, designed by Agnes Northrop in the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany, and built largely by women. The piece was finicky, Kershaw says, and outrageously delicate. I stand among the donors, who are, quite literally, in pearls and heels. We raise our glasses, then Kershaw and I scurry back to the employee drop-off, and I realise that Met life really is entwined, a liquid flow between larger than life and regular life.An 80-year-old woman wearing a floppy sun hat walks past me with a cane and cart. Her name is Syma. She teaches art classes to school groups, and claps in delight when I ask to interview her. This bust, she explains, pointing at a perfectly round head \u2014 half carved into a face, half smooth \u2014 is of the goddess Astarte, who represented both fertility and war. It\u2019s a cast of a clay original she made in 1982. \u201cThings were challenging then,\u201d she says. \u201cMy house and studio had burnt down. I was a single mom. I wanted to take care of my daughter, and keep making art.\u201d She put two slips of paper into the mouth of her sculpture: a wish, that she\u2019d be able to keep on, and a promise that she\u2019d do her part too. Then she closed up the mouth.I ask what the sculpture makes her think of now. \u201cI think of my promise,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I think, wow, she gets to be in the Met-ro-politan Museum! I\u2019m doing my part, keeping on. They\u2019re doing their part. What else can I ask for?\u201dI stand for a minute, watching the commotion. \u201cIt\u2019s all really something,\u201d I say. The woman next to me nods. Her name is Nancy Rutledge. She is a manager in the imaging department. I ask what she\u2019s included and she walks me to a black-and-white photograph of a mountain. There\u2019s a tiny figure in the corner, fishing peacefully.She and her boyfriend both loved photography, she tells me. But during the pandemic, he died. He was the first EMT (emergency medical technician) in New York City to die. For two years she couldn\u2019t touch a camera. But then she started doing something she calls sunset therapy: \u201cI took a picture of a sunset every day. Just to remind myself, there will be another beautiful day.\u201d She took this photo in 2022. The figure, she says, seems to be enjoying life, and that reminds her of him.When people enter the gallery to submit their work, they approach an intake table of volunteers led by Alethea Brown. Brown runs the Met\u2019s box office. She\u2019s been keeping the show organised since the 1990s and tells me, laughing, that it just takes patience. It\u2019s not the volume that bothers her. You just need to know the idiosyncrasies of your colleagues when nearly 700 living artists are hand-delivering their art to you with special instructions.Is there anything like it? I ask. She doesn\u2019t think so. It\u2019s not like curating a Van Gogh exhibit, where there\u2019s one artist, and he\u2019s dead. \u201cAnd even when shows have a lot of works, we co-ordinate with galleries and use our own collection.\u201d Then she rolls her eyes, smiling. \u201cAlso, those shows take two to five years. They don\u2019t do it in a month!\u201dBefore I leave, Kershaw and I notice a new piece has been delivered. It sits alone in the middle of the gallery, left by an art handler. The work is still in its crate, but includes a handwritten note: \u201cPlease notify facilities of \u2018garbage\u2019 elements so as not to throw out,\u201d it reads. \u201cPrevious exhibition elements were thought to be actual garbage and discarded.\u201d Beneath it is a diagram \u2014 side view and aerial \u2014 to clarify where the \u201cgarbage\u201d should sit.Kershaw and I exchange a glance. You don\u2019t know who someone is based on their art, I think, remembering the Duchamp lamp. But you also don\u2019t know who among us is an artist. Better to assume we all are. \u2018Art Work\u2019 is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 18-December 1. Lilah Raptopoulos is a US culture writer and host of the FT\u2019s Life and Art podcast; lilah.raptopoulos@ft.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Tucked behind the Greek and Roman wing of America\u2019s biggest museum, a man is running around, cursing how few power outlets there are in the gallery. He\u2019s surrounded by approximately 641 pieces of art, precariously perched on tables or leaning against walls. Right now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":156199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-156198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156200,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156198\/revisions\/156200"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}