7. Several artists worked at the museum before they became famous
Nowadays you can see works by Sol LeWitt, Jeff Koons, Robert Ryman, and Robert Mangold in the museum’s galleries, but before they became famous they actually worked at the museum. Sol LeWitt started working at the book counter in 1960 and met other artists like Dan Flavin and Robert Ryman. “If I hadn’t been working here and if I hadn’t known Flavin and Ryman and Lippard and some other people, it may not have clicked. You never know; it may have or it may not. But it did. So that was crucial. The policy that they had of employing artists as guards and as people doing lesser jobs was, I think, a very good policy,” LeWitt later recalled.
Jeff Koons moved to New York City in 1977, after hearing Patti Smith‘s album Horses on the radio and deciding he wanted to be a part of the city’s cultural scene. His first job in New York was working at The MoMA on the membership desk. He attracted attention by wearing polka dot shirts, big bow ties, and sometimes even an inflatable plastic flower. Koons claims that The MoMA membership doubled during his time there. Poet Frank O’Hara and actor Kathy Bates also worked at The MoMA before becoming famous.
