Museum Guards Publish their Own Magazine in NYC

There's a new art and literary magazine — one with a twist: Everyone connected with it — the artists, writers, editors and producers — are presently or were recently guards at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, reports National Public Radio (US).

The guards you see at museums may seem like ciphers standing silently in their blue uniforms, and only speaking when you ask a question or get too near that work of art. But the 35 artists showcased in this journal give the world a very different picture of themselves.

The magazine is called Sw!pe, and it's named for people who clock in and out of their jobs. Jason Eskenazi was a guard at the Met until last November. He says that one day, when he was standing around at his job feeling a bit bored, he thought, "You know, the guards really matter in this museum, and so I walked over to a co-worker, and I said, 'Dave, we should do a magazine called Guards Matter.' "

Dave agreed, but wondered where the apostrophe should fit into the title: before the "S" or after?

"Is it about, that the guards matter? Or is it about the matter of the guards?" Eskenazi says. "And we thought it's basically about both those things."

Sw!pe sells for $20, and is beautifully produced. It took about four months to collect the artwork after assembling a team of editors and writers. At the 25CPW, a gallery in New York City across Central Park from the museum, the artist-guards showed their work and celebrated the magazine's first issue.

This wonderful show is one of a kind these days, says Philip Padwe, one of the artist-guards, and the kind of experience that displays the side of New York where artists worked during the day and came home to make wonderful art.

On Sw!pe's back cover is a copy of a letter written to The New York Times in 1915, talking about the "unnecessary cruelty" of making museum guards stand for hours during the day. It's something you don't usually notice when you visit a museum, but it will be hard for anyone, after looking at this art and this journal, not to notice it from now on.