The Night I Met Banksy

Or Halloween at The Whitney

My title is slightly misleading. I’ve never actually met Banksy. I did however take a selfie in the mirror of The Whitney Museum dressed as Banksy on Halloween. In our post AOL 2.0 world that is basically the same thing.

I conceived the idea of dressing up as Banksy while visiting one of his exhibits. It so happened that the end of the artist’s residency in NY coincided with a wild holiday we know as Halloween. Anyone can be whoever they want on Halloween. A boring person can be fun. A shy person can be slutty. And an immigrant from Ukraine can pretend to be a vigilante street artist from Bristol.

It was a great plan. The perfect plan on the surface. One that would culminate with me attending a Halloween party at the Whitney. What better place to be at than the very institution that the person I am dressed as vehemently rejects. I know what you’re thinking. Holy crap, why didn’t I think of that myself. With such vision, what can possibly go wrong! Well a lot of things as my plan quickly backfired.

Aging hipsters, grandmothers and museum curators started approaching me for pictures. And as if pictures weren’t horrifying enough, they were usually followed by an awful question. Oh so are you really Banksy? Did you write that Op-Ed piece yourself? How old are you really? Let me also remind you that this was an open bar affair, and the questions progressively became worse as the night continued.

After some more pictures with the geriatric members of the Whitney board I was asked to take a picture of a group of girls with painted skull faces. It was then that I realized coming to a museum on Halloween dressed as an iconic artist of the moment is a suicide mission if you hate making small talk. Doing things purely out of seeking some attention, dressed as the man of the moment can have horrible consequences. Like listening to a lady dressed as a painting of a Girl with The Pearl Earring retell a story of how she snuck out of the Frick Gallery to come to the Whitney. So next time you come up with the perfect plan remember that time a delusional immigrant met Banksy. Or rather took a selfie dressed as him.