Behind the scenes as Metropolitan Museum of Art reopens after Covid-19 shutdown – and New York tells the world it’s back in business
- A New York icon, the Met has opened its doors to visitors for the first time since closing in March to fight Covid-19. Staff reflect on what it took to reopen
- ‘You can find here respite, solace, maybe even energy again,’ its director says. The same cannot be said of many smaller museums, which may not reopen at all
Dennis Kaiser leaned out of the scissor lift to reach the trumpeting angel. He gently brushed a vacuum cleaner hosepipe along her outstretched arm. For a minute, the sculpture and the art handler formed similar silhouettes in the sun-drenched American Wing.
One, carved of wood 120 years ago, was crafted at a time when the Industrial Revolution was transforming modern life. The other, as contemporary as could be, sucked up the accumulated dust of six months of coronavirus pandemic-required absence.
Although 20 per cent of its staff have been laid off, furloughed or have retired, its giant flowerpots have been left empty for months, and its Great Hall staircase dimmed to reduce light exposure, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was being readied for visitors.
Five months after closing abruptly on March 13, the Met is open again. One of New York’s biggest tourist attractions, and currently celebrating its 150th anniversary with a new exhibition, it had never before closed for more than three days – and that was for bad weather.
Two giant white banners were unfurled on the museum’s front facade: “Dream”, one reads. “Together”, responds the other, both designed by the Japanese-American artist Yoko Ono. “It was a really very uplifting and emotionally charged moment to see that work,” the museum’s director, Max Hollein, said.