Magical encounters
This is a lovely short video from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It was just an ordinary day for Met Security Officer Armia Malak Khalil, born in Egypt but a New York resident for many years. He had been trained as an artist but on arriving in the US realised that there were few chances of work for an artist and so, to be around art, he went to work at the Met as a security guard.
He was on the job in one of the galleries when he got chatting to a visitor about the paintings. But as it turned out, this was no ordinary artlover come to while away an hour. The visitor was Akili Tommasino, curator in the Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art and he had come into the room where Armia was working to examine the painting Flight into Egypt by African American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner with a view to including it in the major exhibition he was planning for the Met, Flight into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876–Now.
As he and Armia chatted, Armia mentioned that he was a sculptor in traditional African style. And, then, as he put it, “Magic happened here,” because Tommasino asked to see his work which led to one of Armia Malak Khalil’s sculptures being included in a major Met exhibition. He is, he says, the only security guard who guards his own work.
The post Ruth Leon recommends…Magical Encounters – Met Museum appeared first on Slippedisc.
