Okay, so normally on this podcast we walk around the galleries at MoMA and look at the

art that's hanging there. Normal stuff. But today I want to take you someplace secret,

someplace in the building that's totally off limits to the public.

Okay, so to get there, you have to go down this little hallway and then there's like a bigger hallway and you have to go up some stairs you have to pay some dude, you know what?

I've said too much.

Okay, but when you get where you're going, you open this door and you're inside a lab.

And there's all these big work tables there's giant suction tubes hanging

down from the ceiling what sort of look like robot arms there's a lot going

on. So sometimes for certain kinds of treatments we have to use solvents and chemicals that are not necessarily too great for our health.

So we use these to extract the fumes.

This is Ellen Davis and all around us is just a ton of incredibly famous art.

There's just like a Matisse leaning on a desk against something, I mean in a very responsible way, but in a

way that's just so jarring to see work not hung up and there's a Picasso next to it just on an easel.

Okay it was kind of like casually hooking up with a Picasso.

It was incredible.

So what room am I talking about?

Where am I?

You guys are like, what are you saying?

So I'm standing in Moma's Conservation Department,

and this is where paintings and other works of art go when they need a

tune up. And so Ellen is standing with me and she's in front of this table and she's got

all these tools neatly laid out. There's scalples, there's cotton swabs, there's tweezers, brushes, a ton of stuff.

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