Honey and Venom

by Andrew Coté

  Prior to and in preparation for the success of the New York installation, my father and I traveled to Los Angeles, where a different copy of the same Huyghe statue, called Untilled, was on display. We learned from the successes and difficulties the Los Angeles beekeeper had faced with the project. While there, we rented a yellow convertible with a black top, because, well, for obvious reasons. I also communicated with the beekeeper in Germany who had previously managed the same installation in Europe. Of course, I was in constant contact with Huyghe’s extensive team of young French female assistants. Huyghe and I spoke over the telephone from time to time. Sometimes he was in France, sometimes Chile, sometimes elsewhere. We never met in person, but we both had pregnant partners at the same time and we diverted to that topic on occasion. It was a strange but ultimately beautiful collaboration.

  As far as the main attraction—the sculpture—went, in the end I was fortunate enough to get the bees to follow the basic plan. Truth be told, my father came up with the idea that turned the tide for art’s sake and encouraged the honey bees to build as we desired them to. Two months into the preparation of the sculpture I had a visit from a sampling of the assemblage of what seemed to be exclusively aesthetically favorable young women from Huyghe’s studio. They were unapologetically late, and mostly stood around smoking and looking bored while criticizing the progress of the honey bees and probably the beekeeper.

  Watching them brood and smolder while mumbling rebukes in French made me feel like I was watching a French film back in that projectionist booth at SoNo Cinema. Mostly, I gathered, because they needed to justify their forty-five-minute journey outside New York City, I trimmed, reshaped, and manipulated the comb while the assistants took photos between drags and sullen looks. They texted these (the photos, not the looks) to the artist. Soon we had the bee-headed woman looking as the artist desired, in the natural way he wished, through trimming and cutting.

  I knew that eventually, the following month, the sculpture would have to be taken to MoMA. Usually costly works of art are transported by specialty art moving services. This work of art was now also home to about fifty thousand bees and counting. MoMA consequently decided that I should be the one to haul it to the museum for an installation at sunrise on a chosen day. I don’t think this decision went all the way up the supply chain, and, in retrospect, it feels like it was reckless. But my father and I lifted the sculpture, apparently valued by some people at over a million dollars, with our secondhand dilapidated forklift into the bed of my aging Toyota Tundra, and strapped it in four times over. We had modified the cargo box to provide for airflow without allowing a direct breeze onto the bees. Satisfied that the sculpture and the bees were as safe as we could make them, we drove into the city.

  I parked my truck on Amsterdam Avenue near where I was living at the time, and figured that most likely no international art thieves also endowed with extensive beekeeping skills would detect and have the ability to remove the piece during the ten hours it was parked there in front of a Chinese food takeaway shop. No bees buzzed around the vehicle, but there was netting over the entire bed of the truck just in case any hobos lurked, and the bees were well situated for the night.

  Later some of the MoMA staff, particularly Margaret Ewing, a contemporary art specialist who was my liaison at the museum, nearly had a heart attack when I told her that I had not driven in that morning as they had assumed, but the previous evening. Their precious new work of art had sat all night on the mean streets of Manhattan. But I had come in the prior evening out of an abundance of caution, wanting the bees to be as calm as possible for the installation. Any disruption to their routine would impact their behavior, and bumping along in the stop-and-go rush-hour traffic of the Cross Bronx Expressway would almost guarantee a festival of stings at the unveiling. I thought that having the rough road behind them with a good chance to settle in overnight, followed by a short drive of a few blocks to their next abode, would put them in better spirits. Plus, I would be able to sleep a bit later and not worry about traffic jams or construction detours.

  The morning that we were to install the sculpture was not difficult except insofar as my patience was concerned. I was amazed at how many people were involved. Though I had enjoyed free rein with the silent reposing woman for a few months, suddenly she found herself being handled by many men unknown to her. During transport I had a mild concern that the comb could have shifted, that the queen could be crushed, that perchance the country bees just didn’t wish to become city bees and might abscond. I had invited several beekeeping friends who were also art lovers, as this was truly a special opportunity—fun for them and good for me to have bee backup in case there was an unforeseen issue.

  An obviously pregnant Yuliana was there in her high heels and tight-fitting dress on her way to work near Rockefeller Center. (Note about Eastern European women: They can walk on winter sheets of ice, climb ladders, and ascend volcanoes in high heels, and make it all appear effortless.) Lastly my friend Jennifer accompanied me. We sat on the tailgate of my pickup with the bees buzzing in the box behind us and watched the teamsters, the MoMA staff, and dozens of others scramble here and there in preparation. Mostly we waited. We decided that in celebration of the day and as a nod to the artist (but mostly in deference to our hunger), Jenn, who grew up in Paris, and was therefore well qualified to choose croissants, would dash off to a nearby French bakery for chocolate and bread. We feasted while parked near the Fifty-fourth Street entrance to the museum.

  After a number of hours and considerable ennui, the sculpture was installed; the bees were intact and pleased—even blasé—to have made it from a New England driveway to the center of Midtown Manhattan. After much scrutinizing over the precise angle at which to place the piece, where this rock should rest, how to adjust that tuft of ivy, whether to include this leaf or that one, we were, at long last, finished and able to take the screen covering from the bees and let them do whatever it was they’d collaborate to do. Luckily, that was just about nothing. They were released with a whimper and did not really stir until the dappled sunlight peeked through the branches of the European weeping beech trees that shaded them. So there it was. A huge hunk of cement in the shape of a woman with the head of an active beehive. It was, to beekeepers, interesting and to civilians thrilling. The new and unconventional apiary was set up on a bed of ivy within ten feet of the museum’s walking paths. I have to admit it was pretty exciting to be a part of it all.

  The piece sat in the sculpture garden from June until late August. The hive was robust, the queen strong and prolific; I checked on the bees twice a day, partly to make sure that there were no signs of an impending swarm brewing, but mostly so I could place a screen cover over the entire thing at night to keep the bees tucked in for the evening. I would remove the screen in the morning. It was apparently in no one’s job description at MoMA to get that close to the bees, and so I visited that sculpture garden fourteen times a week for months. This was not part of the original job description, but I enjoyed it, aside from the fact that I was unable to travel farther than a few hours from Manhattan for the entire summer due to this obligation. A huge benefit of having to go there very early in the morning prior to opening and again after closing meant that I had the place to myself. Though there is round-the-clock security, no one wanted to go near the bees, and once they knew who I was, security just waved me in and left me to my own devices.

  And it was amazing. The sculpture garden has been on the same site between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth streets and Fifth and Sixth avenues since 1939. According to Glenn Lowry, the museum’s director, “the current garden was designed in 1953 by MoMA’s director of architecture and design, Philip Johnson, and is dedicated to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, one of the museum’s founders.” Her townhouse once stood on the site. “But in 2004, architect Yoshio Taniguchi’s new buildings restored the transparency and continuity between the interior and exterior spaces.” It is a
gorgeous oasis in Midtown.

  I met Glenn one day when I was waiting for the museum to close, and I was answering questions in the garden for curious art lovers turned bee enthusiasts. Glenn and I chatted for a long while, and when he walked away I said to Margaret, “That guy was nice.”

  “He’s the director of the museum,” she responded, probably in quiet terror the entire time that I would say something inappropriate, as I sometimes, though unintentionally, do.

  * * *

  —

  Whenever placing a beehive anywhere it is important to consider not only the needs of the honey bees but also the perception of those honey bees by the humans who come into visual contact with them. People are not always well informed about bees and as often as not will allow their prejudices and fears to guide their feelings. That summer, some people expressed concern about bringing bees into the city at all. But even if this colony had not been gracing the sculpture garden, there would have been 258 or so types of bees flying around New York City, as there are right now, and that does not include the wasps. Bees live peacefully among New Yorkers, most types have been in the city for a good long while, and without them we would have significantly less pollination. I find that education about honey bees and their beneficial and docile nature wins over most worried civilians. The rest can elect to stay away from the hive, I say.

  In regards to special considerations when installing Untilled in the sculpture garden, we wanted to establish a natural barrier that would prevent people from coming too close to the hive for the safety and protection of both the bees and visitors, yet not interrupt the viewing pleasure of John and Jane Q. Public. Bees need a bit of space to take off and land, and that space needs to be free of the more stouthearted art aficionados. As inquisitive as people are about art and bees—or in this case, bees as art—most possessed a level of self-preservation that kept them from getting too close to or too curious about the installation. Through the natural barriers that existed with the meeting of the stone patio and the greenery, and the constantly present vigilant security team members, things went smoothly and there was not one sting all summer.

  The bees did very well in Manhattan and were seemingly quite pleased to be a part of the New York City art scene. Few beehives can boast being in such good company—works by Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, and other great artists were the immediate neighbors to these tens of thousands of honey bees. They were enchanted by live classical music or jazz on Sunday evenings. They may well have been the most photographed colony of bees ever, with thousands of people from all over the world snapping shots of them seven days a week. Yoko Ono even stopped by to greet them. They were lucky bees indeed.

  Despite this luxurious setting and the constant attention, the forager bees did just as their name implies they will do—they foraged for nectar, pollen, and water, and they did so traveling up to three miles from their home. Most, according to the orientation of their flight paths, headed to Central Park to enjoy the acres of bounty there. Many others made beelines for Park Avenue, where they feasted on the smorgasbord of nectar on offer there. Their honey may be the most complex, cosmopolitan honey ever concocted by the alchemy through which bees spin nectar into liquid gold. “There are always flowers for those who want to see them,” that wild beast Matisse once said.

  The installation got a lot of positive reviews and the press had fun with it, offering headlines like MOMA’S LATEST ART PIECE IS CAUSING A BUZZ, reporting that included “thousands of visitors have made a beeline for [the piece],” and comments like “She’s bee-headed.” Honey bees and beekeeping naturally lend themselves to puns and wordplay. The fact that we so easily anthropomorphize honey bees is because it is nearly impossible not to do so, and we have no good reason not to.

  Having unfettered access to MoMA for the entire summer expanded my cultural horizons. I was able to halfway meet Yoko Ono when I ran into her. I wasn’t running, but we did physically bump into each other, ever so gingerly, as she was in the basement looking at a collection of foreign versions of Martin Scorsese film posters. (Scorsese’s 1973 Mean Streets was filmed, in part, in Old St. Pat’s cemetery on Mulberry Street, where I had the seven beehives.) I was there due to a love of Scorsese films and a yearning for the uncrowded restrooms I knew were on that level.

  I was struck by how absolutely tiny Yoko is. A wisp. She had on her trademark large dark glasses and a wide-brimmed hat. For a woman of some eighty-plus years she was very well put together, at once frail and a powerhouse. Someone from the gaggle of people she was with told her that I was the beekeeper for the piece in the garden. She said something about bees being in danger, but was quickly swallowed up by her entourage and shuffled in a different direction. Brief as it was, it was thrilling for me to have brushed up against such a legend in the art community. Though I earlier gave the bees credit, Yoko had perhaps truly been the first to bring insects and art together at MoMA in 1971, the year I was sprung into the world. At that time, she had a one-woman show there that was marked by her releasing “flies onto the museum grounds. The public was invited to track them as they dispersed across the city.” Art!

  Yoko was around quite a bit that summer. She had another exhibition the same time the bees were featured, a revival of her one-woman show featuring art from 1960 to 1971. This included her well-known White Chess Set, which I was able to play, though it’s unclear if I won or lost my match. Which was her point.

  Every Friday, Yuliana and I would meet at MoMA and have drinks and something to eat at the Modern, one of Danny Meyer’s restaurants, which faces the courtyard from its home on the first floor of the museum. Danny Meyer is a legend in the restaurant game, and his company even cooks for the staff cafeteria, providing gourmet restaurant-quality meals to the 750 MoMA employees at very low prices. I ate in the employee cafeteria several times per week, since regularly patronizing the Modern would have impoverished me. Danny is the mastermind behind the now global Shake Shack, and several other well-known restaurants. He and I have twice given talks on sustainability and locally and ethically purveyed food at his Union Square café. He is a friendly and generous man. So I was happy to sit on the patio of this high-end haunt, drink whatever was put in front of me, and wait for my sixty-second task of putting the bees to bed for the evening.

  Many evenings the museum hosted crowded live music events in the sculpture garden. Whenever that would happen, I would be called upon to place a large screen cover over the reposing bee-headed woman to ensure that the bees would not be riled by the commotion of the thousands of people in the courtyard. It occurred to me that hundreds of them would have panicked had they known how close they were to tens of thousands of bees. Of course, all parties were perfectly safe, even as the courtyard was filled with the sounds of live jazz or classical music. For nearly half a century, MoMA has hosted free concerts in the sculpture garden, featuring Juilliard School musicians and Jazz at Lincoln Center talent. Really, the bees that lived in the sculpture garden that summer were probably the most cultured ever to be found in the history of the world.

  All good things come to an end. By late summer the exhibition was over. We gently vacuumed the bees off the comb with a special low-suction bee vac that safely removes them without doing any harm. Sasha and I reluctantly removed the townhouse and tenement beehives from MoMA’s roof. We relocated those bees an appropriate distance of more than three miles to prevent the foragers from returning to the same area in search of their former home—all the way out to Rockaway Beach, in fact. The sculpture herself was taken away by teamsters and put into cold storage, which, unclothed as she is, may prove a hardship for the reclining lady. And with her departure, my time at the MoMA came to an end. Sasha and I took the bees from Untilled and relocated them to the apiary we had installed on the rooftop of the Rudolf Steiner School’s high school on the Upper East Side, where Sasha was a student. All wrapped up, I bade farewell to my summer of enlightenment,
returning again to my life as a philistine beekeeper.

  * Both of these names have been changed.

  JUNE

  I love to see a swarm go off—if it is not mine, and, if mine must go, I want to be on hand to see the fun.

  —JOHN BURROUGHS, Locusts and Wild Honey

  Once upon a time our family sold honey and other products from our hives at local farmers’ markets in Westport, Greenwich, Fairfield, and New Haven in our home state of Connecticut. The Westport Farmers’ Market began in the back parking lot of the Westport Country Playhouse, a regional theater with a Broadway-caliber stage, which at the time shared the space with the Dressing Room, a farm-to-table restaurant run by Chef Michel Nischan and sponsored by his business partner, the actor and philanthropist Paul Newman. The restaurant was a huge hit with the patrons of the playhouse and supported the market in many ways, including the volume of food it purchased from the farmers.

  The market was not large at the start, with only about a dozen local farmers. One vendor was Goat Boy Soap, founded by Lisa and Rick Agee. The Agees were motivated to begin keeping goats for their “severely allergic son, Bobby, who was able to tolerate goat milk and quickly became obsessed with all things goat.” The Agees have used our family’s honey and beeswax in their soaps for the past dozen years, and we could not ask for better partners. There were also organic vegetable farmers like Laura and Dave from Riverbank Farm out of Roxbury, Connecticut, and a butcher, a baker, and me, a (beeswax) candlestick maker. From a small startup market, it has grown into a massive weekly event, outgrowing its original space. The market has been masterfully run for the past decade or so by Lori Cochran.