Guard Talk

I want to say thank you to Whitney Gardener, creator of HeyWhitney@blogspot.com , for brainstorming with me and helping me come up with this idea for the blog.

While at the Met for the closing weekend of the Francis Bacon show we were able to start this out. "Guard Talk" is a section of the blog that is going to be dedicated to the people who have to live with the work day in and day out in the institutions, the guards. Those people who tell you to step back and that there are no photos in the museum finally are going to freely voice their opinions. Which is great because there are a lot of guards in this town who are artists to begin with. Some famous artists started out as museum guards, like Brice Marden who used to guard at the Jewish Museum. He said he learned so much from looking at a show of Jasper Johns' work in the 60's. Without that time to just sit and look at the art who knows what he would have done.

"Guard Talk" presents: Met Museum guard Carl and his opinion of the Francis Bacon show as well as a candid point of view about another favorite spot for him to guard. He had this to say, and I am paraphrasing, that the "Bacon show is a great and fun exhibition but dark and disturbing at the same time. There is probably no better time for this show to be up." As for Carl's most favorite place to guard at the Met, it is the roof garden. The current sculpture installation is a work by the artist Roxy Paine. You can see an installation video on the Met's YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/user/metmuseum). Carl said that he likes it up there because of the view and fresh air but he had to, on opening night, tell people who had a little too much to drink not to do chin ups on the sculpture. Lesson one for all sculptors: make sure that your work can with stand a lawyer in tux on his third martini trying to impress his date by showing her/him how strong they are. Thanks Carl for the great story.