The Met Tour Guide Who’ll Make You Love New York
The first time LizaBanks Campagna performed stand-up comedy was on the third floor of what she describes as a desolate mall. She was 13 and didn’t exactly have a lot of material to work with. “It wasn’t very good,” she admits. “But I got one good laugh from these three goths who were waiting to go see a movie, and that was it.” After double-majoring in film and political science at Berkeley and getting her master’s degree in journalism at Georgetown — all while playing Division I lacrosse — Campagna made the move to New York.
While she hits open mics and stand-up shows almost every night of the week, by day Campagna takes tourists (and New Yorkers) on tours of two of Manhattan’s most famous institutions: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Grand Central Terminal. “I love making information accessible, and I think that’s what I do on my tours,” she says. It’s also what she’s started doing on TikTok. This summer, she started posting history-themed videos about the lore behind her tour-guide spots, like the story behind Gossip Girl–famous Campbell bar. Since then, interest in the 26-year-old’s services has surged — she’s now working on starting her own business to meet the demand.
So how’d you become a tour guide?
I lost my corporate job pretty suddenly in May of 2023. The week prior to getting laid off, I’d been at a really low point and was on Glassdoor applying to a bunch of jobs, including as a tour leader for a company that was launching its D.C. market. The day after I lost my job, I had an interview. They found out I did stand-up and gave me the job on the spot, and I started a week later. After I started, I was like, Oh my God, this is so much fun. I love talking to people, I love meeting people, I love talking about history. It’s really good for stand-up because you have to be in front of people and present and hold their attention for two hours. The Mount Vernon tour was literally six hours.
What made you move to New York?
It was enough to make a living, being a tour guide in D.C. and doing stand-up, but I knew I needed to move to New York. I visited in October of 2023 and met my boss, whom I’d never met in person, and he was like, “You could just move markets here if you want.” I moved in January 2024 and immediately got my license to be a tour guide. Ironically, it took my company — they’re a big, global company — a really long time to get me started. I was on the struggle bus my first three months in New York and was working as a production assistant in Philadelphia to make ends meet and commuting back and forth between D.C., Philly, and New York, because I was still having shows in D.C. That was kind of a nightmare.
I finally started the tour-guide job in March of 2024. I started with Grand Central and really enjoyed it, but the salary wasn’t enough to live in New York. This past spring I was working four jobs: as a nanny, a tour guide, a lacrosse coach, and doing stand-up. I started doing the Met tour earlier this year. I was pretty new to it, and I don’t have an art-history background, so I decided to make TikTok videos to help me learn more about the Met. I was not expecting people to be so interested in it. People keep asking, “How do we book a tour with you?” Now I’m trying to figure out how to meet that demand and schedule private tours.
How do you balance your day job with your nighttime stand-up career?
Stand-up is my No. 1 priority. Stand-up is my relationship, it’s my baby, it’s my job. It’s everything to me. I really try to prioritize it, and I think it’s my background in playing sports where I’m used to always going, and I’m a Virgo, so I love a calendar. My calendar would send a colonial person into a coma. I try to schedule accordingly, but I always prioritize doing spots and doing stand-up. Tours work really well with my comedy schedule because they’re usually two hours, and I do one to two a day. My mom has this saying that I use all the time: If you have a task in front of you that you don’t want to do, you say, I choose to make this fun and easy. It weirdly works.
What’s a fun fact you’ve learned as a tour guide that stands out to you?One fun fact that I think about a lot and I talk about a lot is that New York is the only original colony of the 13 that was founded on the basis of economy and not religion. It was the only Dutch colony. I think that’s a super-interesting way to contextualize why New York is the way it is and how it’s become this metropolis and center of commerce, because of that original ethos. When you think about why a cup of coffee costs $12 or why we have to explain to our loved ones what a broker’s fee is, it all goes back to the original founding. It’s also why this is a place where people come to make their dreams come true, because it’s the land of opportunity.
The Egyptian collection is the largest collection of Egyptian objects outside of Cairo, because there was a partage between the Egyptian government and the Met for 30 years where we provided the resources, mostly funded by J.P. Morgan, to excavate in Egypt because the Egyptian government didn’t have the resources, and we got to keep 50 percent of the objects. That was the deal, that was the partage. When I have kids on my tour, I’m like, “Let’s say you have a backyard full of treasure, and you know that there’s treasure back there, but you can’t dig. Your friend says they’ll dig for you, but they get to keep half of it. Is that fair?” It’s really interesting because kids are so honest, so they will give you their real take. Some people will say yes, some people say no, and it’s up to debate.
What’s your favorite piece in the Met? Why?
It changes all the time. There was this piece this summer that was on loan from the Fine Arts Museum in Boston, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, by John Singer Sargent. There was a special Sargent and Paris exhibit that was on this summer, which was unbelievable. I think I went 20 times. The funeral flowers by Van Gogh, that piece I’m always coming back to.
There’s also a really cool exhibit called “Casa Susanna.” It’s this trove of Polaroid photos that were found by two antique dealers in New York at a flea Market in 2004, and it’s all these photos of men who were cross-dressing in the 1960s. The photos are amazing. The women are amazing. The perspective of what an ideal woman looked like in the 1960s and how that reflects domesticity and femininity is really cool. They were real people who were living their lives as businessmen in the Financial District, but then they had this secret other life where they got to express themselves together, and it’s a beautiful example of the way that art can transcend social norms and exist in a vacuum, and we get to see it now. It’s on through January.
Is there a popular art piece in the Met that you think doesn’t deserve the hype?
There’s the tomb of Perneb, which is not overhyped — it’s really cool — but it’s the first thing that you see when you walk into the Egyptian wing, and there’s often a line to get in because it’s so tight there. When I’m giving tours and I see the line is really long, there’s literally another tomb around the corner called the tomb of Raemkai. It’s not as big, but it’s very similar and you get the same sense from it.
What about an unpopular one you wish more people would pay attention to?
The Met is constantly changing its stuff. Because they have 2 million pieces on hand, I think they do secret move-arounds on the Wednesdays they are closed. I’m always trying to notice things. There are Fabergé eggs right by the Met roof elevator. Lorna Simpson, who’s an American photographer, has this really cool exhibit called “Source Notes” that I’ve been loving. She uses sources from Ebony and JET magazines and then melds them together to make these really cool screenprinted collages. I think that’s not getting its flowers enough, because there have been so many special exhibits this summer.
What about Grand Central?
I love the story of the eagles at Grand Central. There’s two eagles — they’re from the depot, because the Grand Central Depot was first built in 1871 and that was like the OG building on 42nd Street, and then when they knocked it down and they were building Grand Central Terminal, they got rid of these eagles. They didn’t really care where they went. You know when you’re moving and you’re trying to get rid of stuff and you throw it on the sidewalk or beg your friends to take it? That is literally what they did with the eagles. In the ’80s, they found one of the eagles in the Bronx in an overgrown backyard. In 2004, they found another eagle in a monastery in upstate New York. I’m always like, If you have any leads on the ten other eagles …
Do you have any hot tips about the Met to share with our readers?
Something I didn’t know about the Met is that you can make appointments with the drawing and prints departments to see some of the objects that they have in their possession but aren’t on display. My friend, who’s an artist, took me to see Rembrandt’s Drypoint Princes. The Met owns three versions of Christ on the Cross — there are 17 versions of them, and it was a life-changing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I totally teared up and lost my damn mind. I don’t think a lot of people know that you can do that. You just have to be a member of the library, and then you can make an appointment. I’m going to try to make an appointment this fall to see some of the Sally Mann photos because they don’t have any of them on display.
Do you have any favorite shops in the city?
There’s a really good consignment store by the Met that has its own art museum of Pucci and Birkins and Chanel that I love going into; it’s called Michael’s, and the most fancy ladies in the Upper East Side consign their clothes there. I love James Veloria; that’s my favorite vintage shore in Chinatown. I really like Goods for the Study; it’s a really good stationery store. I’m a Virgo, so I love my notebooks. I have to run an errand today at B&H because I have camera stuff I’m looking to upgrade, and I get my film developed at this really good place in Chinatown called Eliz Digital.
What you’re wearing is totally art. I talk about this too on my tours where I’m like, “What kind of art do you like, what kind of movies do you like? What kind of cult designers do you like? What kind of stores do you shop at?” People will think they’re not connoisseurs of art, but I’m like, we’re constantly consuming art. It’s just a matter of investigating what you like.
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