Everything I Know about Art I Learned at the Met

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Text and Images by Andrew Prokos

In my previous articles I have presented some of the top photography collections in New York City museums. I have also presented some of the best photography galleries in NYC. In this article I will discuss some biographical background info about how I personally came to take up photography more than thirty years ago now, and stayed for a lifetime. As the title of this article suggests, everything is basically due to my very first full time job in New York City, and one I was none too happy to take at that time. Read on below for the details.

Start at the Beginning

To begin this journey I will have to take you back…way back, to 1991. I had just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Florida at the ripe age of twenty. Against the advice of my professors in the Political Science department at UF I applied to graduate programs. Most had suggested that I was a bit too young and one offered to sponsor me to do a tour in Poland, which at the time was just emerging from behind the iron curtain. Another professor in the German department had suggested that I apply for a scholarship to study in Bonn, which was still the capital of Germany in 1990. Alas, I had passed through UF in two years and a semester and none of these options were really viable for me.

I returned home after graduation and sat on the bed in my room typing out my grad school applications on my state-of-the-art typewriter with autocorrect ribbon. I applied to NYU (accepted), Fordham (accepted), Columbia University (rejected), and Georgetown (I honestly don’t remember, but most likely rejected). I settled on NYU and started preparing to move to New York, which is what I had wanted all along…despite the fact that I had only been to New York once to look at schools, and it wasn’t even a long trip. How could I be certain that New York was the right choice? I couldn’t, I didn’t think that much about it and my parents were no help whatsoever. Neither of my parents had gone to college, they were immigrants who came over from Greece as children…all they knew was work and more work in the family business. My sister and I were basically left to our own devices when it came to school and applying for college. Their only advice? Don’t bring home anything under a B on your report card.

Now it had never occurred to me that once I arrived in New York that I would some how magically need to support myself. I had worked two work-study jobs simultaneously at the University of Florida…as the docent of the grad student computer room, and then as a research assistant for a professor in the Political Science department who spent most of his time on his boat in a rather inebriated state. I assisted his graduate student in compiling data from Florida municipalities and entered it into databases in the computer room while assisting the grad students with their needs. For this I got paid an additional $5 an hour…a whopping $10 in total. That was a lot of money for an 18 year old back in 1990. It was not technically permitted to hold two work study jobs simultaneously, but seeing that the grad student I had been hired to assist quit out of exasperation with his alcohol-sodden mentor, I was it…so the professor turned a blind eye and I became the new non-graduate-student research assistant. I had to cajole Mabel, the Political Science department secretary who handed out checks every two weeks, to give me my check without reporting me to the University. I can still hear poor Mabel…”it’s not right, it’s just not right!”. The rest of my financing as an undergrad came from Pell Grants (much more plentiful back then), a small amount of student loans, and the rest came from my parents.

Suffice it to say that I really wasn’t worried about where the money was going to come from to pay NYU for graduate courses…a big, big mistake in judgment on my part that my parents didn’t have time to think about nor to correct. When I declared my intention to move they said “we paid for your college degree, if you want to move to New York to keep studying find a way to pay for it”. That was that. They were also in the midst of a divorce, and the business wasn’t doing so well…they weren’t up for funding my New York misadventures.

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Culture Shock, NYC Style

Fast forward to post-graduation. I had been accepted at New York University and I had a friend from University of Florida who wanted to move to New York City as well to pursue an acting career. How and why he thought himself able to make it in NYC as an actor I don’t remember questioning too hard at the time, it suited both our needs so we rolled with it. We decided to split the rent and I flew to New York to find my new apartment. He stayed behind and picked up our stuff with some friends and drove it all up from Florida in a U-Haul. How exciting!

My first days in New York were pure culture shock. New York still had quite a bit more character back in the early 90’s. The city wasn’t as polished as it is now, and I encountered many more ethnic groups than I had come into contact with growing up in small town Florida. Just dealing with trying to find a decent apartment in the Village Voice was an ordeal back then, and it was a sign that my path wasn’t going to be so smooth…New York does not welcome naive people with open arms, they become fodder for the service industries that serve the people that New York does actually welcome with open arms…rich people!

My roommate and I settled on a walk up apartment in the East Village and we both started looking for jobs. He found it faster than I did being a skilled waiter already back home in Florida. I, on the other hand, got fired from every restaurant in Manhattan…I can still hear the owner of one Italian restaurants sending me home after a trial shift and telling me “you just don’t have the moves kid. sorry.” I was dejected. The first five months of my stay in New York went on like this…rent was due every month, and tuition of course. This was not good, not good at all.

Eventually I had the realization that I was either going to have to borrow $50,000 a year to pay for grad school and work, or just drop out. After much consideration I decided to pause grad school to give me time to find a workaround. In the Spring of 1992 after deciding not to even attempt more restaurant work and feeling quite desperate, an opportunity appeared in the New York Times jobs section. “WANTED – Full Time Security Staff for Metropolitan Museum of Art”. Hmm, how bad could it be?

Guardians of the Polyester

I called the Met’s job posting and they interviewed me at some point, which I vaguely recollect. What I do remember is the week-long training to become a security guard, being fitted for a new blue polyester suit, and getting fingerprinted. Voila! My money problems were over. My security position entitled me to an annual salary of $17,500, health benefits, sick days, vacation days, and overtime. I was now a member of Union DC37. What alien planet was this that I had just landed on? I had a four year degree, and now I’m a security guard?? Oh the shame, the ignominy! What would I tell people back home?

I started on the floor as a security guard at the Met in July 1992. My first day out on the floor was a Friday evening…I was sent to the Egyptian Wing. I was to be placed in the hands of a seasoned veteran, a 35 year old Italian-American artist named Oberdana Di Pasquale who had started one month before in June. She was born and bred in Brooklyn…she was not a newcomer to NYC like I was. I finally had a friend that was a native New Yorker, until this point I had only been surrounded by transplants to New York City.

Oberdana was very meticulous about her work, and she took the job very seriously. I always considered the job as transitory and I always had an attitude…everything was one big joke to me. It wasn’t an endearing quality to some lifers at the Met. As it happens, Oberdana had recently graduated from Parson’s School of Design with a degree in painting and illustration, something I only found out later when we became closer friends and deeply embedded in each other’s lives. Oberdana and her Italian-American parents became my New York family. Her father was a legendary Assistant Cameraman in the industry in the 70’s-90’s, and much in demand for his follow-focus technique. This was a first window opened to me into a creative realm…one that would only be opened further by my other encounters at the Met. By the way, Oberdana went on to have her own photography enter the permanent collection of the Brooklyn Museum when Barbara Millstein was the head curator of photography.

Back to Oberdana…she was somewhat typical of the artist types that found a home at the Met. They were a bit of a foreign breed to me since I had never gone to art school myself, nor by this time had I ever even picked up a camera. But I was now surrounded by serious creatives who were working as guards at the Met either because they really couldn’t deal with more stressful types of jobs, or because the four day work week suited them so they could spend more time in studio, or because they wanted to be near the art…or all of the above.

That’s not to say that being a guard at the Met wasn’t demanding in its own way…you did have to deal with all kinds of people, and in large numbers, and often determined to thwart your will and undermine your authority. Most of the visitors were perfectly fine, some even lovely…but a few were quite a handful and underestimated exactly how much authority the guards have. As a member of a union the security guards basically cannot be fired from the Museum…and they have the authority to expel visitors from the premises if needed. I myself never had to do it, but we did get some real winners…the ones who came to the museum to expose themselves to young Asian women, the couples who got frisky in the passageways, the visitors who insisted on getting too close or even touching the art no matter how many times you told them not to…and the really special ones who brought ‘sacred oils’ to the museum and tried to anoint the granite statues of the Egyptian cat goddess Sakhmet. They then prostrated themselves to pray in front of their favorite Egyptian deity. Yes, all of this happened, and much, much more…including all of the affairs between employees at every level of the museum. Maybe there’s something about the art that just makes people feel frisky?

One of the benefits of being in the union was that the guards can work overtime and get paid time and a half or even double pay on holidays. Despite the meager annual salary, I leveraged overtime to my benefit…especially when it became apparent that I would be moving to Europe and needed to save a tidy sum before I left (I discuss my time in Europe in this article.)  I worked extra shifts, I worked holidays, and best of all, I worked the parties. The Met Museum hosts innumerable parties and events during the course of the year, the best known of which is, of course, the Met Gala benefiting the Costume Institute. Now back in my early 20’s I was not a bad looking young man, and I was in very good shape. The Museum used to post me on “cape” duty…which basically means donning a different type of ceremonial uniform with a red cape and I would have to escort the ladies in their evening gowns and high heels up the main steps of the Museum. You would often come into close contact with celebrities of all kinds; movie stars, famous actors, musicians, models, politicians, etc. My personal list included Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, David Bowie and Iman, Ric Ocasek and Paulina Porizkhova, and I even got to escort Lauren Bacall at one event…now that impressed me.

Equally impressive was being posted to a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Museum. Now why the dispatch decided to put a twenty year old in the meeting room of the Museum’s Board of Trustees is still a mystery to me, but it was certainly an eye opener for me. During the meeting new items being considered for acquisition by the Museum’s curatorial staff are presented to the Trustees to vote on. I don’t remember all the items that were proposed, but I do remember the jewel-encrusted Papal letter opener which was passed around on a velvet pillow for the Trustees to examine. To my amusement, I later saw the letter opener in one of the cases in European Decorative Arts.

When Art Speaks You Must Listen

I have provided some color behind working at the Met, but I haven’t explained how transformative it really was to a twenty year old transplant from Florida who was a bit enamored and overwhelmed by the city. The guards work long shifts at the Met…it’s typically two twelve hour days and two eight hour days. Plus if you wanted to make extra money you worked overtime, holidays and events. At time and a half and double pay it added up. I was able to finally afford my own apartment (although tuition was long gone, I never went back to NYU) and was living in New York…simply but it was no hardship at twenty years old.

In many ways I feel fortunate that I started working at the Met at such a young age. I was still impressionable at that age, and my brain was a sponge. There are only two choices really when you are holding up a wall for twelve hours at that age…learn or tune it all out. I chose to learn. I read everything I could, I listened to every lecture every docent gave as well as the visiting professors. I read every plaque, I memorized every object in every case. I learned the history of ancient cultures such as the Babylonians, the ancient Chinese, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, Medieval and Byzantine Christian art, Islamic art, Japanese prints, African art, Mesoamerican art, European painting from every epoch, American art, and contemporary art. Art everywhere, art all the time. Had I gone to school for art history it would not have touched this education. But you needed to be open to receiving all of this information. In addition to the long hours embedded in the galleries, the employees could attend lectures for free, had the chance to purchase art books at steep discounts from the book store, etc. All of which I did…I still have the books thirty years later.

In addition to being exposed to the actual art, and the educational opportunities which arose from working at the Met, it was the people I met there who set me on a path to become more curious about engaging my own creative side. It was clear that I didn’t have the space nor the training to take up painting, so I settled on a camera instead. I went with Oberdana and her father to my first camera store…42nd Street Photo in Manhattan and purchased my first camera gear. I was instantly hooked…obsessed really. That camera never left my side in those early years. I even set up a darkroom in my little apartment to process the black and white film and make prints. It was a significant detour from the path that I thought I would be following, and it was due to my exposure to creative people and to great works of art in close proximity. I actually didn’t have a grasp on it at that age, but looking back over the years it comes into clearer focus.

My life was undeniably changed after the two years I spent working as a guard at the Met…I moved on and lived in Europe for two years, came back to New York and spent a decade as an amateur photographer. I could not, and did not, expect what was coming…if you had told me then that I would have a 20+ year career as a professional photographer I would never have believed it. But such was the formative education that the Met gave me. It was an asteroid that knocked me off course, and the voice of all those artists speaking through their art that provided a clarity that I needed.

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