Look closely next time you find yourself in Carroll Gardens: Tucked into the residential streetscape, just past the BQE on Union Street, is a minuscule exhibition visible entirely from the street through a panel on one local artist’s front door.
This is the Salvator Mundi Museum of Art, sculptor Elliott Arkin’s homage to the strange story of Leonardo da Vinci painting The Salvator Mundi.
Long believed to be lost, the badly damaged 16th-century work resurfaced at a New Orleans estate sale in 2005 and, in 2017, became the most expensive painting ever sold at public auction. Shortly thereafter, Arkin decided to trademark “Salvator Mundi,” which is Latin for "Savior of the World" and refers to a specific depiction of Christ in which his right hand is raised and he holds an orb in his left.
The painting had become “a symbol of finding a lost treasure, something that we all kind of search for in life. So I decided, why don’t I take that term and give it this symbolism, and make it a brand.”
In 2018, to promote his new brand, Arkin opened a tiny exhibition space dedicated to the painting in the 45-square-foot lobby of his home.
The Museum.
Where once there were coats, umbrellas, and his daughter’s bicycle, there is now the Salvator Mundi Museum of Art, currently featuring an exhibition on orbs, inspired by the crystal sphere in the painting. It’s the second show of the year, and Arkin has lost track of how many shows there’ve been in total.
“We had a show called Salvator Barbie. I had a show based on Dianne Modestini, who was the woman who restored the painting,” Arkin rattled off while climbing the stairs to his apartment, hidden behind a secret door in the museum, currently adorned with various orbs and placards about them. “And then I had an exhibition about the beetles that ate Renaissance paintings back in the day.”
The beetles exhibition was that year’s annual “spooky exhibition,” timed to Halloween. Arkin also does a joke exhibition most April Fools’ Days, further poking fun at the concept of art’s worth.
Arkin’s wife, former New York City Ballet dancer and current repetiteur for the George Balanchine Trust, Deborah Wingert-Arkin, is a fan of what her husband has done to their lobby. She has been particularly in support of the current orb exhibit, which, unlike some past exhibitions, does not impede egress within the space.
“It's the difficulty of getting down the stairs to get to the laundry room. I mean, it's not anything other than that. I love what he's doing. I love his creativity,” she said from their living room, where Arkin’s own art is strewn about in various phases of completion. Families in the neighborhood often stop by with their kids, she said, using the exhibition as a lesson about how, “art can be really unique and special and if you’re that passionate about it, you put it out there.”
She said she loves this about the Salvator Mundi Museum of Art, “but it is a pain in the butt to have to move things around to go down the stairs to the basement.”
Patrons often make the journey to the museum – which Arkin lists as being open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – without realizing it’s never really “open”: It’s entirely viewable from the street.
If Arkin is home and free, though, he will often go downstairs and open the museum even further. And give visitors free merch.
“ A lot of times, people come and they can't get in the door, so they press the Ring and they say, ‘Hey, are you open? Are you open?’ I say, ‘Yes, yes, and you are in the museum.’ But sometimes I'll say, ‘Just wait, wait, wait. I'll be right down.’ And I go get 'em a pasta sauce,” Arkin said. The sauce features the slogan, “The world’s most expensive work of art is now a great pasta sauce.”
“It’s a brilliant addition to the neighborhood and an absolute conversation piece. God only knows how many times I’ve had to explain to customers that if they’re standing in front of the door, they are already inside the museum!” said Paul DiAgostino, owner of The House of Pizza & Calzone, a restaurant on the block that Arkin refers to as one of “the museum’s two cafes.”
Arkin said he has big dreams for the museum's future. He’s working on a Salvator Mundi musical, has the next three exhibitions planned out, and is always adding new and innovative merch to its online gift shop, where he sells baby bibs, cigars, coffee and more, all branded in dedication to “one of the most mysterious and debated paintings in the world,” as his Salvator Mundi coloring book puts it.
He said he sees it all as a large art piece that, like much of the rest of his body of work, pokes at the purpose of beauty under capitalism, the worth of art, the worth of history, the meaning of ownership, and reality. As acclaimed curator, honorary Mundi museum board member and Arkin’s neighbor Robert Storr puts it in the intro to one of his past exhibitions’ catalogs, “The question is: Can the art world take a joke?”
Perhaps not, but Arkin and those who find delight in his absurd little museum certainly can.
