If you've ever visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, you've probably seen the huge displays of designer flowers in the museum's Great Hall. Believe it or not, the Met has its own personal florist, whose job it is to create five such arrangements each week.
Remco van Vliet is a Holland native who grew up in a family of florists. He came to New York in 1994 and found work in wholesale, but his floral talents were quickly recognized, reports Pursuitist.com. The previous Met florist, Chris Giftos, took van Vliet under his wing for seven years and eventually let him take over the arrangements in 2003.
In Holland, modern flowers and floral arrangements are more of a science than an art. Much like surgeons in the United States, master florists in Holland are required to complete seven years of study, even going so far as to learn the names of flowers in four different languages, reports The Wall Street Journal.
A fund established in 1969 by Reader's Digest co-founder, Lila Acheson Wallace, pays for the arrangements, which can sometimes reach heights of 20 feet. Most of the arrangements in the Great Hall are about 10 or 12 feet high, but special parties and events often call for more elaborate displays.
According to The Wall Street Journal, van Vliet has a routine for creating the displays each week. First, he visits his favorite wholesale florist and chooses blooms based on the season and on their quality. He doesn't buy anything that's shorter than 6 feet, so his arrangements tend to revolve around long-stemmed items like camellias, rhododendron, forsythia and cherry blossoms.
"I get inspired by the craziest things," he told the news source. This includes stealing color combination ideas from the outfits of people on the streets of the East Village - in fact, according to the news source, he once saw a woman wearing olive green and bubblegum pink, which inspired one of his summer arrangements.
When it comes to designing floral arrangements for gallery openings and special events, van Vliet tours the collection with the curator before it's open to the public, reports the news source. He then conducts the appropriate research to find the colors, shapes and designs that are featured prominently in the museum's collection. Because each display is constantly evolving, van Vliet never has to worry about a lack of ideas.
If you're looking for inspiration for a floral arrangement for your next dinner party, a trip to the Met could be all you need to get started!