After working at New York City's most prestigious art museum for over a decade, a chance encounter has given security guard Armia Khalil the rarest of opportunities: the chance to watch over his own work. As the New York Times recounts, the 45-year-old Khalil was helping a visitor find an Egyptian painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he mentioned offhand that he was a sculptor. It turns out the visitor was museum curator Akili Tommasino, who was doing research on an upcoming show. "In just 15 seconds I told him, 'By the way, I am Egyptian and an artist,'" Khalil told PIX11. "He didn't look at the painting. He looked at me. He paid full attention."
Tommasino asked to see his work, and after viewing a sculpture on Khalil's Instagram page, offered him a spot in the upcoming exhibit, "Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now." "I just knew, based on that image, that he was talented," Tommasino tells the Times. Khalil got to work on a new piece—after working his day job at the museum—cutting into a stump he found in a park near his Bayonne, NJ, studio. Now, his resulting sculpture "Hope–I Am a Morning Scarab," can be viewed in the museum until February 17.
Khalil's story—he got a security job at the Met and his US citizenship in 2012, six years after arriving from Egypt—is resonating. As is the scarab beetle, symbolic of hope, in his sculpture. "He tells us not to give up hope," museum visitor Loaela Hammond tells PIX11. "You're supposed to keep hoping. I'll tell you what, it's been a stressful time, so thank you." (An art world mystery: who has this Van Gogh?)
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