Artist Smuggled His Own Drawing Onto the Met's Walls — and Filmed It

On Sunday, October 25, Los Angeles–based artist David (Sabastian) Miklatski smuggled one of his own drawings onto a gallery wall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — and then posted the whole caper to Instagram, where it went viral.

Hyperallergic first reported the stunt. According to the outlet, Miklatski "detailed the steps of creating and surreptitiously installing a drawing on one of The Met's gallery walls last Sunday, October 25."

The work is titled The MET 2027. It's an oil pastel painting — though the artist calls it a crayon piece — showing a Met Gala attendee ascending a staircase flanked by shrubs and photojournalists, while police in riot gear beat down protesters in a fiery scene in the foreground.

What does the stunt actually say?

Miklatski didn't just hang a picture. He built a pointed juxtaposition. His Instagram reel, set to The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (widely known as "Teenage Wasteland"), cuts between three visual registers:

• His drawing installed inside the Met's galleries
• Glittering scenes from the Met Gala
• Harrowing images from Congo, Paris, Milan, Gaza, Haiti, Ukraine, and the United States

The contrast is the argument. In the reel, Miklatski describes the Met Gala as "an event where billionaires donate millions of dollars so celebrities can play dress up in the name of art." That quote carries the piece's critique: institutional art-world glamour set against global conflict, compressed into a single framed image and a museum wall.

The Met itself became, in the artist's framing, an unwitting venue. Hyperallergic notes the museum hosted the work without knowing it — the drawing hung among the institution's own collection until the reveal.

How did he pull it off?

The mechanics are almost comedic. Miklatski says he "did it in crayon to make it extra ridiculous," then details the tools of the operation:

• A baby stroller
• A portable speaker loaded with sex noises
• A deceptive friend in on the ruse

The stroller presumably provided cover for carrying the work; the speaker and the friend served as distraction. The artist lays out these steps himself in the viral reel, which doubles as both documentation and how-to confession.

This places Miklatski in a familiar lineage of unauthorized installations — artists who test whether a museum's authority comes from its walls or its vetting. When a crayon drawing hangs unnoticed beside sanctioned masterpieces, the gesture asks what institutional endorsement is actually worth.

What happens next?

The reel is public, the museum is named, and the documentation is permanent. Whether the Met responds, removes the work, or presses the issue remains open — but the artist's video has already done its job, putting an uninvited artwork in front of a far larger audience than the gallery wall it briefly occupied.