Preparations

Before my 100 days began, I canvased each numbered gallery on the Met’s official floor plan known as “The Map.” Six panels folded behind a red, rectangular cover roughly the size of a paperback. In the upper left-hand corner was “THE MET,” the museum’s famous six-letter logo, stacked in serif, just one inch high. Like most winning nicknames it was short, but got the job done. Just saying “The Met” made me feel like I’d arrived, even when I wasn’t there. Running up the right-hand side of the cover, far larger, was the word “Hello” in plain, bold lettering. More than any single person, the Map was greeter, guide and confidant. It spoke multiple languages. There was Bonjour, Hallo, Привет, 你好, مرحبا, Hola. 

My first task was to determine which galleries qualified as rooms for my upcoming daily draw. Over the course of a weekend, I checked out walls, corners, ceilings, entranceways and dimensions. The configuration of a gallery mattered. I required a sense of enclosure. When in doubt, I defaulted to my gut. Did the gallery feel like a room? 

Not all did. Since rooms have corners, I eliminated spaces that amounted to hallways or thoroughfares. Some numbered galleries were simply too big. The space with the Temple of Dendur was out. So was the atrium in front of the American Wing. In the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas Wing, numbers were ascribed to areas; there were few distinct boundaries. I found only one conventional gallery. The same was true for the mezzanine in the Modern Wing. There, spaces serpentined into one long kunsthalle, but not a room. I also numbered a few spaces of my own, for example, the stairways in the Modern Wing. Each had a display case tucked against the wall on the ground floor. If a gallery number corresponded to two distinct spaces, I gave them each a bid. I omitted galleries that were starred on the Map as special exhibition spaces. I wanted to spend time with the museum’s collected personality. During the time of my visits, the rooms dedicated to British Art and Musical Instruments were under renovation– off the list. The Map only numbered rooms with art, so there would be no visits to the bathroom, gift shop or cafeteria as illuminating as they might have been. In the end, two hundred eighty galleries met my criteria. These were the rooms.

I ordered three packets of balsa wood disks off of the internet. The pieces arrived sized like coins and in need of a craft project. I numbered them up, each with the digits of a vetted gallery and placed them all in a bag I had saved from Dunkin’ Donuts because I didn’t have a hat and the company’s early morning mantra made me smile. Next, I established my rules. 

I already knew that I would remain in each room for exactly an hour, a generous session by New York psychoanalytic standards. The 360° spin of a minute hand would reiterate a room’s enclosure. I would draw each day’s gallery number just before leaving my apartment, never the night before and never in a group at a time. Actually, I always picked two disks. The second served as a backup in case the first room was closed. When I returned home, both disks would go into a “used” mug that gradually filled day by day. Only if I had needed it, did I learn where the back-up room was located. I planned to take notes in a black Moleskin notebook. The image secretly delighted me. I would look serious and maybe even important. For whom or what, I did not know. I would head immediately to my appointed gallery for the day. There would be no stopping, no matter what art flirted from the wings. I would speak only if spoken to. I would never leave the room for a break. In short, I was totally loyal to the room. Later, at home, I would not research rooms, works of art or the museum itself. I was a visitor and wanted to keep it that way. The errors in judgement (I did my best with dimensions, but never pulled out a tape measure) as well as the false assumptions that exist on these pages are mine alone. To those disgruntled by such a non-scholastic approach, I apologize in advance. Even though museums are a part of my life and I attended graduate school in art history long ago, I am not a museum professional, critic or art historian. I wanted to experience rooms like most people do– without an agenda except to look.

And yes, drawing that disk each morning was a thrill. In the seconds between selecting a number and charting my course, I felt the freefall of fate. That bag of numbers held my destiny. Each room was waiting.