The show will go on
This year’s Met Gala may be postponed, but memories of the first Monday in May should still be celebrated. Here, John Barelli, former chief security officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reveals what it was like to be responsible for one of the riche
contact with my people. If anybody broke through, we would be able to stop them before they got into the museum. I used to stand at the top right near former American Vogue editor-at-large André Leon Talley, who would be doing interviews. He’d come over and talk to me once in a while … ask me how I was doing. He was a fun guy.
In 1996, the chairperson in charge of the Christian Dior show said they wanted me to handle the security for Princess Diana. I picked her and her sister [Lady Sarah McCorquodale] up at the heliport, drove in and met up with them at the Carlyle. I told [Diana]: “I’ll be at your side the whole evening. Anything you need, you let me know. I’ll tell you what we can and can’t do.” She said: “Oh, I just have one request. This dress I have is very skimpy, it’s like a slip and my strap on top keeps on turning.” She added: “When you see it turn, just fix it for me.” So I said: “Yeah, okay. I’m going to fix your dress.” But I never did. I never touched the dress.
After the dinner that year I brought Diana up to a balcony where there were no people and she could look down. We went towards the temple and we looked through the glass doors and she said: “I’d love to dance.” I said: “No, no, I can’t really let you go into that.” There was a crowd of 2,000 people in there dancing. I explained: “I can’t do that, because you wouldn’t be safe.” We got in the car – there was me in the front with the driver, Sarah and Diana in the back. I turned around to them and joked: “Okay, ladies, let’s go for a nightcap.” And they said: “Where?! Let’s go.” And I said: “No, no. Wait. We can’t really go anywhere. It’d be crazy if we tried to just go to a bar.” So, they said: “Well, let’s go to our room.” It was room 2701 at the Carlyle. They had a nice bottle of champagne and played the piano.
Princess Diana was absolutely stunning, but she was just a down-to-earth, regular, nice person. You felt so comfortable in her presence. I really did feel she had this trapped life. I think she wanted to be more normal, wished she could just go out and do what she wanted. There are only two people in all these years I did this work where you couldn’t bring them out in public because there would be hysteria. It was her, and the other person, in his prime, was Michael Jackson.
I remember taking Madonna around … taking Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie around, and they were all very normal. I’ve accompanied heads of state and all kinds of celebrities, even presidents of different countries – and everyone was very normal. I guess because their guard is down and they don’t have to worry about anything.
[Another big celebrity moment] had to do with the dinner entertainment for the Met Gala. Anna would usually pick somebody who was at the time up and coming – Beyoncé, Rihanna and Lady Gaga. I forget what year it was but it was around the time of her The Fame Monster album when Lady Gaga performed. I was at the stage and it was an unbelievable performance; she was unbelievable. And there’s this guy next to me and he turned to me and said: “Boy, this kid’s really good.” It was Bono.
The biggest thing that’s taken off with the Gala is social media. Now it’s part of the show and we’ve learned to live with that in the security field. The costumes have changed too, but that hasn’t changed what we do one bit. That’s just part of the show, that’s the freedom of artistic creativity.
The Met Museum closed the museum to visitors on Friday, March 13, 2020, [due to the coronavirus]. As soon as I heard this, I thought about the upcoming Met Gala on the first Monday in May. In my 38 years at the Met and my 37 Met Galas there was never a postponement or cancellation of the Gala. In fact, the only days that the museum closed to the public during my tenure were the day after 9/11, and the day that hurricanes Irene [2011] and Sandy [2012] hit New York. The Met security and maintenance programs go on 24/7, 365 days a week, since the art collection must be secured and maintained even though there is no visitation or events like the Gala going on. You need healthy staff to carry out their security posts and programs to protect the treasure trove of art that is assembled at the Met, which is considered the greatest encyclopedic collection of art in the world.
It takes months of planning between museum staff, designers, curators and Vogue staff to organise such an event as the Gala, so I was happy to hear it was postponed and not cancelled. In the 1980s and 90s the Gala event occurred in the first week in December. It may be possible that it will go back to that date, or another date, as we get over this disaster. I am very confident the Gala will happen in 2020.
Ordinarily when I see TV and news reports about the Gala, I feel a sense of longing for the days when many challenges were directed to me and I had to lead the charge. It is hard, but I can separate myself from my previous life with a sense of satisfaction of my past performance. From time to time I talk to members of my management team and ask them how it’s all going. I left the Met in good hands and the present security management team are very capable, talented and professional.
On a personal note, I started dating a Met Museum sales supervisor, Anna Saliwon, whom I married in 1983. Anna and I, after 37 years, are still married. I really do feel like I owe much of my good fortune to the halls of the Met. Stealing the Show: A History of Art and Crime in Six Thefts out now.
“Princess Diana was absolutely stunning, but she was just a down-toearth, regular, nice person. You felt so comfortable in her presence”