Museum Hack, which started about a year ago, offers unorthodox tours of museums throughout New York — including one dedicated to the perkiest posteriors on display at the Met. “An admirer of butts for quite some time,” Kate Downey, 25, came up with the idea and leads the tour. “You go to an art museum and there are obviously butts hanging out, but no one ever talks about it! Everyone is just like, ‘Oh, yes, this is great art,’ ” she says. “But once [the topic of butts] is out in the open, everyone has a lot to say.” According to Downey, these are New York’s must-see high-culture rear ends.
The Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island
“She was shipped to the US in pieces from France, which means, at one point, her butt was in its own crate. Also one of the only butts in New York you can walk around inside.”
Lucy, at the American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street
“At 3.2 million years old, this is possibly the first human(ish) butt: Lucy’s species, hominid, is thought to be one of the first to stand upright. It’s sort of a skinny butt, being fossilized bones, but the museum has done us the favor of fleshing her out with a model next to the bones, so we can see what her butt might have looked like on the plains of Ethiopia 3.5 million years ago.”
Rear views at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave.
Kongo Mangaaka Power Figure, Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas: “There are mostly masks and heads in this wing, but there’s this guy called the Kongo Power Figure. He’s squatting and has such a perky, firm butt! He was used in the center of town: If you were negotiating a marriage contract, you’d agree on the terms of an arrangement and then the two parties would nail a piece of metal to the body of this figure. So he’s got this powerful pose because the reason you won’t break this contract is the spirit inside of him will come out and curse you and your family.”
Perseus, European Sculpture Court
“That’s the butt you’re aiming for when you go to the gym. On the tour, we talk about what good exercise hacking Medusa’s head off must be for the glutes. Its impact is presentation as much as substance. You can see this butt all the way from the other end of the museum. It’s displayed in the middle of the corridor and the light shines down on it from the skylight.”
Hercules, Greek and Roman galleries
“There’s a lot of scholarly dispute over the best butt in the Met. Hercules’ butt has a little more heft to it, and the statue is propped up with a little stick under his butt, so your attention is drawn to it. Some feel this is the most ‘Bam! In your face!’ butt.”
“Naked Man, Back View” by Lucian Freud, Modern and Contemporary Art
“There’s this Lucian Freud painting of a large naked man sitting on a white ottoman with his back to you. It’s his whole massive backside. It’s widely rumored that the subject was one of the most notorious drag queens in London at the time … and this was the only time he allowed himself to be painted naked as a man. Freud was a very grotesque painter, but it’s so cool you can’t look away.”