The Met's Museum Workout: A New Way To Experience Art

Featured on forbes.com

There’s something quite beautiful about waking up in New York, the city notorious for never sleeping. There’s also something beautiful about waking up with an art museum, before its doors open to the public, as sunlight streams onto the statues.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue recently introduced its Museum Workout—a 45-minute guided dance-cardio routine that that covers two miles of the building’s most iconic exhibits before opening hours.

The sessions start at 8:30 a.m. and run for 16 select Thursdays through Sundays (Jan. 19-22 and 26-29, Feb. 2-5 and 9-12). The $35 tickets, which include admission to the museum for the remainder of the day, sold out months ahead of time.

The program, developed over the course of two and half years, grew from a collaboration between the contemporary dance troupe Monica Bill Barnes & Company and writer/illustrator Maira Kalman. The company’s artistic director, Monica Bill Barnes, and its associate artistic director, Anna Bass, choreographed the routine while Kalman narrated the motions.

Each morning, Barnes and Bass, donned in dramatic sequined dresses paired with gray New Balances, lead a pack of 15 through jazzercise-like movements that travel in rhythm to a disco-rock soundtrack.

While the routine “stops” at 14 of the museum’s most iconic pieces, the workout aims to keep your body in constant motion—jogging in place before a nude Perseus, marching through Egyptian sphinxes, stretching before the American wing—never stopping. While portraits stare down statically and statues remain frozen, Kalman’s voice calls out, “keep moving!”

Though inspired by dance, the routine is repetitive at the most elementary level—intuitive enough so participants can organically immerse themselves in their surroundings.

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