A Secret New Show at the Met, Off Limits to Museumgoers

By COREY KILGANNON

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the largest spaces in the world for the public viewing of art, goes to great lengths to advertise its shows, including draping huge banners in front of its ornate facade on Fifth Avenue.

But on Monday, a new show will open there that museum officials want to keep as quiet as possible. They will not discuss it publicly and the only people allowed to attend are museum employees and their guests.

It is the Employee Art Show, and while it is widely known among museum employees â€" if only, to some, for its lavish reception that includes free food and drink - it remains virtually unknown to the general public.

The show includes paintings, sculptures, videos and other installations, and accepts submissions from all employees, not just guards.

It is held every two years, and this year's show runs for two weeks through August 19. It will includ e about 400 pieces, most of them made by the blue-blazered guards who stoically stand sentry over priceless works in the museum's public galleries.

This year's show is housed near the southwest corner of the second floor, in one of the museum's most prominent galleries, the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor gallery, where the renowned Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty show was held recently.

But the show is hidden behind an unobtrusive door at which employees must present identification and must accompany their guests in the gallery.

Even tighter than the security, perhaps, are the lips of museum officials about the show. Harold Holzer, the museum's senior vice president of external affairs, said the show was a private event and would provide no information about it.

Every one of the nearly 20 guards approached while working in the museum this week said they were forbidden to speak to reporters about the show, which is open during museum hours but also on Mond ays when the museum is closed to the public.

Fabian Berenbaum, president of Local 1503 of District Council 37, which represents many museum employees, did not return requests for comment.

But a select few guards, reached by telephone, did agree to speak. They are part of a group that founded an art journal called Sw!pe Magazine: Guards' Matter, after growing frustrated that the museum kept the shows private â€" and indeed had held no employee show for several years before the 2010 show.

“Most people would love it to be open to the public, and a lot of people feel that it's a shame that it's not,” said Christopher Boynton, 45, a museum guard and a painter and photographer living in Astoria.

And Peter J. Hoffmeister, another guard, said that by keeping the show private, museum management officials risk sending the message that “they don't want to validate the people who work for them.”

“It's complicated to have artists working for you who want their art on the walls, I understand that,” said Mr. Hoffmeister, who has been working the night shift at the museum for four years and has a small abstract painting â€" paper mounted on wood - in the museum show. “But as an artist I think it should be public because keeping it private defeats the purpose of having an art show.”

These two guards, both of whom help edit Sw!pe, and others who agreed to speak anonymously, said that keeping the show private seemed odd in the New York art world, where the idea is to get as much exposure as possible.

The guards lauded the show as a show of good will by museum management and said opening the show to the public would not only increase the number of visitors but would also improve the museum's image. Besides, the guards said, much of the art is quite good.

The show's organizers accept one piece of artwork per employee which “must be framed properly and ready for hanging” and “no larger than four feet in any direction, except for three-dimensional pieces,” according to an e-mail on the guidelines obtained by The New York Times.

The last show, in June 2010, drew about 5,000 visitors, according to the e-mail, and nearly 700 attended the opening reception held in the museum's Petrie European Sculpture Court.

The 2010 show featured works that ranged from a three-inch miniature desk to a four-foot-tall doll. There were live orchids in handmade boxes of Italian tile, and a puppet theater. There was a wool suit lined entirely in metal pins, some original jewelry and various canvases, prints, photographs and video installations.

As the Met prepares to open its furtive show, a gallery in Chelsea, the Family Business Gallery, is holding a show that features museum guards working in New York City and includes works by nearly a dozen Metropolitan Museum guards.

Mr. Hoffmeister, 27, of the Inwood section of Manhattan, has a piece in the Chelsea show: a print based upon the floor plan of the museum.

Mr. Boynton said that some employees had often speculated â€" but had never been told by museum officials â€" why the show has remained private.

“Maybe it's because they would have to insure the art in the show,” said Mr. Boynton, who displayed a double portrait in the 2010 show but has no piece in this year's show. “Maybe it's that, if someone's artwork is shown at the museum, people may think it's being sanctioned by the museum.”

Another guard, who asked that his name not be used, said, “It's very secretive because the museum management does not want to be seen as elevating the status of the work as art that is hanging in the so-called real museum.”