大象传媒

At his day job as a security officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Armia Malak Khalil spends his time guarding precious artworks. That includes paintings from great masters like Rubens, Caravaggio and Rembrandt. By night Armia works out of a studio in New Jersey, making his own artworks. Namely, carving sculptures out of wood.

One day in 2023, Armia was at work at the Met when he noticed someone who looked lost. As per usual, he approached the visitor and asked them if they needed help. They were looking for a particular painting: Flight Into Egypt by Henry Ossawa Tanner. While he directed the guest to the artwork, Armia mentioned his own art and showed the visitor his Instagram. The mysterious guest was interested because he wasn鈥檛 a guest at all. In fact, he was Akili Tommasino, the Met鈥檚 Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Akili was planning an exhibition centred around this painting Flight Into Egypt. Then Akili asked Armia, would you like to be part of the exhibition?

That conversation led to Armia becoming the first current employee of the Met in recent memory who has had a piece in a major exhibition. Armia鈥檚 story starts, however, far away from the famous New York institution. Armia was raised in a small village in Egypt. His parents were keen on him having a stable job as a nurse or teacher. But Armia defied them to go to fine arts school. He dreamed of being a professional artist and moving to the United States, partly because of his love of the Mel Gibson film Braveheart. In 2005, Armia was granted an immigrant visa. It would take another seven years before he scored his security job at the Met and more than a decade before he got his biggest break as an artist.

Also in the programme: as people around the world mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp in Poland where more than a million people - mainly Jews - died during the Second World War, we're replaying an excerpt from our 2022 interview with the extraordinary survivor, Eva Schloss. Eva tells Emily Webb about a perilous night-time journey through the camp to save her mother's life, and sitting with Otto Frank after he discovered the diary of his daughter Anne.

Presenter: Jo Fidgen
Producer: Saskia Collette

Film archive: Braveheart / Icon Productions / Paramount Pictures / 20th Century Studios / FilmFlex / Mel Gibson

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Armia carving his sculpture Hope鈥揑 Am a Morning Scarab. Credit: Armia Malak Khalil)