Artist by Day, Guarding Artwork by Night
The small hours of the morning — when the galleries were empty, hushed and dim — were Greg Kwiatek’s favorite part of his 25 years as a night guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, when he could spend hours looking at a single masterpiece.
Then, shortly after sunrise, Mr. Kwiatek, now 74, went home to his simple apartment in New Jersey to work on his own paintings, which were often inspired by those he had guarded at the museum.
This month, Mr. Kwiatek’s work was shown in a small group exhibit at Fierman Gallery in Manhattan.
“He developed a very intimate relationship with much of the collection and a lot of that has really permeated his practice,” said Alissa Friedman, who organized the show. “Some of his works are direct homages.”
Working at the Met taught Mr. Kwiatek how to look.
“You get an hour to do a route,” Mr. Kwiatek said at his cramped studio in New York, referring to one of the museum’s seven sections. “I would do a route in maybe 40 minutes, and then I would have 20 minutes to focus on one piece. I got to know some paintings pretty well by doing that.”
Mr. Kwiatek is emblematic of a large but little-known swath of the art world — those who have never been famous and likely never will be but doggedly, passionately keep at it anyway.
His paintings are quiet and understated. He often makes versions of the same image repeatedly — in particular a series inspired by a 1906 photograph of Cézanne carrying his paintings. The small ones go for about $5,000; the larger ones for about $20,000. He also sews needlepoint images, many of which echo his paintings of the moon and sun.
A tall, solid man from a Polish family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mr. Kwiatek radiates the taciturn intensity of an introvert who would much rather be communing with paintings than human beings.
This is what made him gravitate toward the overnight shift at the Met in 1987, where he worked until retirement in 2011. “I’m not a people person,” he said. “I figured by working at night, I wouldn’t have to deal with the public much.”
The schedule was not easy — working from 12:15 a.m. to 8:20 a.m. and going home to paint meant he was always tired. But the lifestyle suited him. And he took pride in the work.
“My job was to walk at least four hours a night,” Mr. Kwiatek said. “You know every square inch of this building — you’re doing surveillance.”
It has been over a decade since Mr. Kwiatek last walked these routes, yet the Met remains in his bones. “Route Three includes European painting, painting conservation, Japanese art, musical instruments, Arms and Armor,” he said. “The Rockefeller wing, that would be Route Six.”
He continued: “We’re drinking 20 cups of coffee a day. I would sleep an hour on my lunch break at 4 o’clock in the morning. You’re living with works of genius. And I’m not a genius. But I knew that what I had the privilege of guarding — it was otherworldly.”
Works by Mr. Kwiatek, who studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in his 20s, have been exhibited periodically.
“He was an extremely nuanced colorist in his abstractions — they were very mysterious paintings,” said the dealer David Zwirner, who owns several of Mr. Kwiatek’s pieces. “There was such maturity to the work and this kind of intensity. There is probably not another person who’s looked at art longer than Greg.”
Mr. Kwiatek never married or had children. His needs remain few, his ambitions modest.
“I’d like to make enough money so that I can afford to keep myself off the street,” he said. “Maybe buy a studio apartment.”
A solitary life, surrounded, always, by paintings.