The MET Museum Line Will Not Sanctify You

Tonight, the line for the Metropolitan Museum of Art winds all the way down to the street. It will be cut off on Monday when construction begins on its next life. The Cantor Roof Garden will be locked away for five years, which this crowd has chosen to call forever. 

There are food carts on the front steps. They serve visitors who have given up on the line. As they clump together under painted banners, their flashbulbs capture the golden light that outlines the museum’s marble shadows. It is barred behind the MET’s arched windows, which bear a black pattern of divided diamonds that put stars in your eyes if you stare long enough. 

As someone who’s never had a church, this Friday night feels like Sunday morning. 

It’s easy to see why some people aren’t in line. The procession moves slowly, and most of them don’t expect to make it all the way to the garden. I suspect they stay standing to prove they’ve done everything they could before the doors close. That’s why I’m here. 

The woman in front of me has a green Labubu dangling from her purse. I’ve brought my green Skullpanda, so we’re friends for a few seconds. My plush keychain is meant to embody an Impressionist painting. Two trends two centuries apart. Mine has wide glassy eyes and a leaf embroidered on one ear. Its name is Pond. It never faces forward. I love it anyway. 

The procession is suddenly split in two. My half is diverted through a shortcut that should only open for card-carrying donors. This is the only situation in which I walk through. As the small door opens and we enter a tiny library, I no longer feel unlucky at the back of the line. 

After checking in—it turns out it can be done online, but then I wouldn’t have taken the shortcut—the line scatters across the museum to find more footsteps to follow in. 

We wander past boats made from houses and houses made from boats. The Arts of Oceania, indigenous and intricate. Greek marble statues block our paths like chess pieces. Perfecting their bodies was an art, but a face stays with me. Her brow furrows as she smiles at the sky. Her steady hand peels back her own layer of marble. She might have been Otacilia Severa. Whoever she was, she is alive. 

Under her pedestal, MET employees wind themselves up to wind down with us. They all point in different directions. It’s tough to tell if their blazers are black or blue. They are too tired to smile. They don’t know if we’ll make it to the roof. The line under it is longer.

I find it all the way across the chessboard. There’s no room for this group to go their separate ways. Velvet ropes zigzag across mahogany wood. No one stops to read the plaques behind them. Those empires have died, and ours is counting down. 

Another vaguely shaded blazer opens the doors over our heads and announces that the line is on pause. They won’t say when it reopens. I ask one of the wind-ups by the Greek exhibit. Her hue is closer to blue, and she says I shouldn’t expect an answer. 

I decide to stick around in case the line starts up again. I find a room that reminds me of the book Jane Eyre. The walls are yellow and frosted buttercream. It is a recreation of some noble’s home. I sit on a soft green cushion and look out the window at a cloudy English meadow. The air tastes like chamomile tea. How many Oceanic boats sank to lay this place’s foundation? 

Down the hall is a maze of European paintings. They hang over empty fireplaces. The walls are dark facets of sparkling jewels. A long time ago, a man painted a girl lost in thought. He also painted her underwear. The plaque says it means the artist means she’s becoming a woman. I wonder what she means when she turns away with her face to the light. Probably leave me alone, I’m trying to think. 

The basement of the MET is as out of reach as the roof. No one wants to go down there anyway. It’s empty in the heart of Europe. There is a guardrail around the basement stairs. A ring of trees grows around a stagnant pond below the velvet rope. Doorways to the jewel box, the meadow, and the chessboard surround me. 

Above me is one more window. 

It acts as a secret exhibit, like an M.C. Escher painting hidden in plain sight. Split windowpanes are carved like the arches out front, but their facets form a pyramid. When you look up, you see your own speck of a reflection standing at the center of a massive temple of glass. 

The same staircase climbs opposite sides of the midnight prism. Trees seem to take root in empty reflections. Other lost souls jump across the grid and fall between the lines. Their footsteps echo everywhere. When you move outside your windowpane, you split in two. When you step inside, everything is symmetrical. 

The golden light isn’t spilling from the seams anymore. There is no mad dash to capture it on camera. It is simply part of you. Inside and outside. On the steps and on the roof. 

And that is why I’ve never had a church.