Alert readers will note that today’s date falls on a Wednesday, a day the Met is closed to the public. One of the great pleasures of my life is knowing so many incredibly talented people such as my friend, the writer, educator, and librarian Laura Winnick, who lives here in New York City. She let me know about her friend, Lydia Aikenhead, also a writer and someone Laura has known since high school writing camp. Lydia also happens to be a book conservator at the Met and invited us to see her work, visit the underbelly of the Met, roam the empty galleries with her, and eat in the employees’ cafeteria. 

We signed in at the bag check area at the 81st street entrance, my usual spot to enter. Lydia took us to her department, book conservation, a smallish work area, maybe the size of my classroom, with five or six workstations, one of which was manned or I should say womanned by two volunteers who were working away on what appeared to be bindings. The room is outfitted with huge metal presses, giant vises for holding books together, the largest paper cutter I have ever seen, and what they called the guillotine, good for “slicing large stacks of paper and also hands,” according to Lydia’s colleague. 

Lydia is working on a grant funded project conserving around a hundred or so 19th century children’s books from Europe. She pulled a few to show us. I didn’t feel comfortable asking to take pictures of new acquisitions that are probably not cataloged yet but I found some links to similar items. The first one was a magic flip book, a blow book, designed for a magician to show a number of pictures, often in black and white, using the ridges in the paper to hold their spot, then the audience member blows on it and the pictures magically transform. The next book was so precious, and I found nothing like it online, just some similar outfits. This was originally a calendar book from 1883 where someone, presumably a child, had removed the calendar pages and replaced them with intricate, painted, colorful rooms and scenes where tiny waxed paper people could be inserted or into various outfits. The last thing Lydia pulled was a “theatrical” pop up book, very similar to this one, where layers of scenery would lift up as a stage, revealing the words of the story at the bottom.

Lydia’s colleague was working on flattening out some interleaving, which is the term for the paper that goes between printed pages (I didn’t know this term!). Deciding whether to repair or replace is always an issue. Newer paper might have an unwanted chemical reaction with the old paper. The way Lydia explained her job, it sounds like a thousand decisions a day: What kind of use will this book get? What is the appropriate course of action? Repair? Replace? How much time will it take? She took us into the hall and showed us drawers of interleaving options, all Japanese papers. If they are used for repairs, they are affixed with a wheat or rice paste. This was all endlessly fascinating. 

Lydia then took us into the bowels of the Met, which was thrilling. We peeked into textile conservation and object conservation, where there stood a wooden carousel horse awaiting repairs. As we walked the halls, a man moved past us pulling a golden angel on a nondescript wooden pallet. Just another day at the office. The underground part of the Met is every bit the labyrinth as the above ground. We returned to the galleries and idly wandered around chatting about books we are reading. I pointed out some favorite pieces. Lydia and I gushed at Laura over the Palissy ceramics, which are still a wonder. There were a few other Met employees scattered about showing people around. There were repairs and cleaning happening. Walking into a completely empty sculpture pavilion, with the sun streaming through was magical, like someone took an ordinary visit to the museum and blew on it. All the colors were changed.

We finished our visit with lunch in the employees cafeteria, which had a fine salad bar. We chatted about teaching and schooling and recent Supreme Court decisions, and then it was time to part. As we signed out, the guard said, “Will I see you next Wednesday?” with a wink as he knows what a privilege this is. I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow!” To which he replied, “I’ll be right here. See you then!”