A job that changed me: I was a rookie tour guide for art lovers – no one goes harder than active seniors in search of cultural enrichment

I spent time in some of the greatest art institutions with groups of self-funded retirees. But a vacation it was not

In 2012 I was living in Sydney, halfway through the shelf life of our annual theatric political satire The Wharf Revue, although I didn’t know that at the time. I was also doing some work for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, hosting panel discussions and interviews, when a colleague asked if I would be interested in co-leading a guided tour to New York, focusing on art and theatre. Of course I said yes.

Handling the art side of things was my gallery colleague Brian Ladd and together we landed in a wintery Manhattan in January with about 25 guests largely, shall we say, a certain demographic who were keen to sample the cultural delights of the great metropolis.

And let’s face it, there’s no shortage of them. We took in the Metropolitan Museum and the Cloisters, MoMA, the Frick, the Whitney, Radio City, the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, the High Line, half a dozen shows and several exhaustive bus tours from one end of the island to the other with our indefatigable local guide Frederique. We even managed a backstage tour of the Met, led by a volunteer who actually paid for the privilege of conducting them! A full-on schedule but, let me tell you, no one goes harder than an active senior in search of cultural enrichment. By the end of the 10 days, we were desperately in need of a holiday.

In 2014, it was just me and Frederique leading guests through Chicago and New York. I went solo in 2016 for New York and Philadelphia, braving the second-biggest snowstorm on record to hit the east coast. Broadway went dark, the subways stopped running and at midnight we saw a guy swooping down Fifth Avenue on skis. It was the most exciting part of the trip – Al Pacino struggling and largely failing to remember his lines in the new David Mamet play didn’t come close.

Since then, I’ve done Canada, the UK and another trip to New York. One scheduled for earlier this year was cancelled due to a curious reluctance among art lovers to travel to the United States. Mind you, I probably wouldn’t get through customs anyway; it wouldn’t take long to track down evidence of me being less than polite to the president.

But a vacation it is not. I was on call constantly. I now know more than I probably need to about breakfast vouchers, bus charters, lost or hospitalised guests, wheelchair hire, a higher than anticipated beverage spend, ticket allocation, gallery docents who know even less about art than I do, and the vagaries of group dynamics on a 36-seater coach stuck in traffic on 45th Street with no restroom in sight.

Spending so much time in some of the greatest art institutions in the world with groups of self-funded retirees, and the social connection I still maintain with many of them, has inspired me to make tentative steps along a new career path. I’ve written a cosy crime book about a hapless tour guide enlisting the help of his regular travellers to steal the three separated panels of a 16th-century triptych and reunite them as a symbolic protest against the modern desecration of artistic integrity. Think The Italian Job with mobility scooters instead of Mini Coopers.

My work as a tour leader has opened my eyes to two things: the fun that can be had in organised group travel; and the almost infinite richness of art history held by the world’s great galleries. Especially with a view to the possibility of pinching something. Not that I ever would, of course, and my research has shown that the most successful thieves target the second tier of institutions with less security anyway. Besides, robbing churches in Europe is even easier, just saying.