Museum Security Guards

For as long as I can recall, museum security guards have fascinated me. Amidst art enthusiasts and casual visitors, they keep watch over history and culture.

With museums gravitating towards investment-focused collections, heightened security has followed. The modern museum experience has taken on a TSA vibe with security guards moving in and out of gallery spaces. Once knowledge fortresses, museums now weigh cultural conservation against economic pressures. They anchor the significance of their collection with its future financial value. It's improbable that many artists foresaw their creations necessitating a security detail.

During the pandemic I illustrated a few guards I met on my iPad using the Paper app. My intention was to remove the guards from the context of the museum space and to highlight them as art objects of their own.