Artist Sneaks His Work Into the Met Museum
David Mitlaski says his oil pastel painting of the Met Gala captures “A-list celebrities prancing, while the world outside the museum gates is collapsing.”
Amid the spate of publicized museum heists sweeping the globe, one Los Angeles artist has flipped the script by adding his own artwork to the walls of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In a viral Instagram reel, multi-hyphenate artist David (Sabastian) Miklatski detailed the steps of creating and surreptitiously installing a drawing on one of The Met's gallery walls last Sunday, October 25.
The work in question, “The MET 2027,” is an oil pastel painting depicting a Met Gala attendee ascending the staircase flanked by shrubs and photojournalists as police in riot gear beat down protestors in a fiery scene in the foreground.
In the video, Miklatski juxtaposes clips of stars like Zendaya and Sabrina Carpenter getting photographed at the Met Gala with footage of mining conditions in the Congo, riots in Paris and Milan, homelessness in the United States, the US- and Israeli-led mutilation of Gaza, gang violence in Haiti, and Russia bombing Ukraine.
Capturing the “absurdity of it all,” Miklatski says the painting depicts “A-list celebrities prancing, while the world outside the museum gates is collapsing.”
