Museum Guards 'Sw!pe' The Spotlight
There's a new art and literary magazine — one with a twist: Everyone connected with it — the artists, writers, editors and producers — are presently or were recently guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The guards you see at museums may seem like ciphers standing silently in their blue uniforms, and only speaking when you ask a question or get too near that work of art. But the 35 artists showcased in this journal give the world a very different picture of themselves.
The magazine is called Sw!pe, and it's named for people who clock in and out of their jobs. Jason Eskenazi was a guard at the Met until last November. He says that one day, when he was standing around at his job feeling a bit bored, he thought, "You know, the guards really matter in this museum, and so I walked over to a co-worker, and I said, 'Dave, we should do a magazine called Guards Matter.' "
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