50% Off Everything at MET Museum! Nelson Saiers Commercializes the View

Not to say that folks punching each other over a flatscreen are philistines, but you have to wonder if they’d be better off gazing upon the ravishing and lucid Delacroix exhibition instead of unreality TV.

If you want mystery or to trace the lines of power, corruption, and examine who’s pulling the strings behind so-called “Western democracies”, you might want to skip up the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy exhibition.

” . . . as much a reckoning with our past as a road map of our current era . . . “ — Surface

Nelson Saiers. MET Intervention. (photo © Jazmin G)

Alas, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, artist Nelson Saiers wondered why there weren’t many people hanging out in the museum’s gracious galleries to gaze upon masterpieces of the world – and thought he would install SALE signs that might draw crowds away from Best Buy.

“If you went to the Met as it opened on Friday many of the galleries were essentially empty, so you could spend some quality one on one time with some of the greatest works of art ever created,” says Saiers, who has been experimenting with “statement” Street Art installations like putting a large inflateable “Bitcoin Rat” on Wall Street in front of the Federal Reserve building last month.

Nelson Saiers. MET Intervention. (photo © Jazmin G)

Whether many people saw the “Black Friday Special 50% Off” signs he placed around the museum or not (he estimated they each lasted about a half hour) he is still glad to have his critique on societal priorities.

“It was meant to be a bit of a satirical commentary on the non-stop commercialism we experience daily,” says the Hedge Fund manager turned artist, posing wittily or scurrying in some of the photos in the empty galleries with romantic artists like Ernest Meissonier, Paul Cezanne and his wife.

“Would you prefer to spend time with some of the most significant culture ever produced or shop?” Saier asks. “In the end, it was meant to be a humorous commentary, and hopefully, it was entertaining for the few who did see it.”