Nina Katchadourian: Art handlers. They are the professional breakers of the “don’t touch the art” rule because they unpack, install, hang, deinstall, and pack the art again. Although they don’t dust artworks, art handlers dust things like the tops of picture frames and vitrines, like the one you are standing in front of now, which holds Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim’s piece called Object.
Harvey Tulcensky: My name is Harvey Tulcensky. I am an art handler, and I’ve been here forty-two years. There are ritualistic aspects to dusting here. It’s not about the dusting per se; it’s about the dusting of something that means so much to me that I feel I am helping that thing. In the case of the Surrealist vitrines, which I’ve always loved, not the vitrines, but what’s in them, I would face those and clean them, including dusting them, including wrapping a cloth around the swifter and making sure that it’s getting all the dust, because I wanted that to shine, because to me, the works in those vitrines were exquisite. And I wanted them to be, you know, just beautifully dressed up.
Nina Katchadourian: I’ve always envied art handlers this access. When Harvey talked about dusting the vitrines of works he really loved, it was so clear that there was an intense intimacy about the act for him.
Harvey Tulcensky: Handling the art, without wanting or trying to sound naïve, is kind of magical. The art handlers are the only ones that really handle it in a very mundane and everyday way. Something I think we all do, because 99% of us are artists, is we pick it up and look at it, just like you would pick up a gift around the Christmas tree or something. We play with the art in that sense. That’s the magical part of the job.