Humble Met Museum security guard's dream comes true after his stunning sculpture earns exhibit spot
A humble security guard and sculptor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art got a fairytale ending as his artwork is being displayed in the New York City institution after a chance encounter with a curator.
Armia Malak Khalil, 45, of New Jersey, first stepped into the Met in November 2006 as a visitor.
He had just immigrated to the US from Egypt a month prior with only $375 in his pocket at the age of 25 and he was dying to see the museum, especially the Egyptian Wing.
'I still have the ticket,' he recalled to The New York Times.
Khalil, who graduated from art school in his home country, was suddenly in front of the world's greatest artists, including Van Gogh, Manet, and Monet, but he was most interested in the artwork from his homeland.
'I asked them, where are the Egyptian galleries?'
It would be in that same gallery more than two decades later when he would encounter Met curator Akili Tommasino wandering through the artwork looking for the Flight Into Egypt oil painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner in the summer of 2023.
He asked Tommasino, who was not wearing his work badge at the time, if he needed any help.
Armia Malak Khalil, 45, of New Jersey , first stepped into the Met in November 2006 as a visitor. He now works as a security guard for the institution and is an artist currently featured in a major exhibit
His piece, titled Hope - I Am a Morning Scarab (pictured) is featured in the Met's newest Egyptian gallery
When the Harvard-educated curator asked for the painting: 'Of course, I knew it,' Khalil told The Times.
'At this point, after 10 years at the Met, almost everything about Egypt [Gallery], I would know. Almost!' he said.
While guiding Tommasino to the painting, he learned the man was not one of the thousands of daily visitors, but a Met employee like himself and one who was curating a new Egyptian exhibit.
The exhibition - titled Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt, 1876-Now - was to feature black artists - including modern Egyptians - who used Ancient Egypt as inspiration for their own work.
After learning that Khalil was also more than what meets the eye too and was a security guard by day and a sculptor by night, Tommasino invited his colleague to make a sculpture for the exhibition and Khalil agreed.
After he would get off his shifts from the Met, he would travel home to Bayonne and work in his studio crafting what would become a piece called: Hope - I Am a Morning Scarab.
The sculptor is made of wood and is a bust of a woman whose head is sitting on a scarab beetle - a symbol of hope in Egypt - and is roughly two feet tall.
It came about after he accidentally encouraged curator Akili Tommasino, who was wandering through the artwork looking for the Flight Into Egypt oil painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner in the summer of 2023
He learned Tommasino was curating a new exhibition - Flight Into Egypt: Black Artists and Ancient Egypt 1876-Now - and the curator invited Khalil to make a piece for it
'They observed the scarab beetles, they would see them every morning, coming out of the mud, the same cycle of life, doing the same thing every day, not getting bored or tired,' he told The Times.
'I love that idea.'
He finished the piece in May 2024 and the museum photographed it for their catalog.
By October, he sealed the piece with a goodbye kiss and it was shipped off to the museum, according to The Times. After it left his New Jersey studio, he would not be allowed to touch it again while it was on display at the famous museum.
'That was my last chance to touch her,' he said. 'I kissed her goodbye. Even though I was going to see her - but in a different way.'
His work is now being displayed in the Met and will be until February 17.
Khalil described the moment as a 'really big [one] for me.'
'[It's] like two galleries away from Van Gogh!' he told The Times.
His piece was completed it May 2024 and has been on exhibition since November. It will be available to view until February 17
Khalil has come a long way from woodworking in Egypt near the pyramids (pictured). Little did he know that decades after his family would try to convince not to go to art school his work would appear in a major institution
Tommasino called Khalil's work a 'masterful sculpture that belongs in the exhibition.'
'The show would have been missing a key element,' he told the publication.
But the moment went beyond just being a career highlight and cementing himself in the art world more than he already is, but a moment of triumph after decades earlier his family tried to convince to be anything but an artist.
Growing up in Qulusna, Egypt, meant Khalil spent time playing on the banks of the Nile River, using its clay to craft art and copying his artistic brother.
His desire to be an artist grew in middle school when he won drawing contests and by high school, he had 'made up my mind.'
But art school was expensive and his family encouraged him to become a teacher or something more practical, but he wasn't deterred.
His cousin, who is a priest, funded his art program in Minya, around 160 miles outside of Cairo.
While in college, he began woodworking and found work craving small religious figures.
Khalil immigrated to the US in September 2006 after his sister reapplied for a visa for him after his first was denied. How he works at the Met and has a woodworking studio in Bayonne, NJ
After school, he hoped to move to the US, but his visa was denied. He moved to Cairo and worked near the pyramids, making work sculptures.
At least once a week, he visited the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
In 2005, his sister changed his life. She had reapplied for a visa on her brother's behalf and he was one of the 55,000 people who were granted an immigration visa.
He would land at JFK with two suitcases, one full of woodworking tools, in September 2006.
Little did he know that an art museum he would visit shortly after his arrival would change his life in more ways than one.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Khalil for comment.