Berhanu Taffa

Museum: Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St. NW; 202-639-1700, Corcoran.org. (Farragut West)

Title: Security officer Years on the job: 10

Relationship to art: “Before working here, I thought art was only paintings and sculptures. I didn’t know about the impressionist movement, the expressionist movement. I knew a love for art was in me.”

Favorite painting in the museum: “Niagara,” by Frederic Edwin Church (1857)

Why it’s his favorite: “I love landscapes. Church was in the Hudson River School [a 19th-century American art movement]. You don’t see a foreground where people can stand, so you feel like you are inside the water. And it is huge; it is enormous. The message to me is about manifest destiny, that America is destined to discover the entire America from north to south. I am not an artist, but I love it.”

Marlene Tucker

Museum: National Gallery of Art, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue NW; 202-737-4215, Nga.gov. (Archives)

Title: Guard (lieutenant) Years on the job: 30

Relationship to art: “I cannot draw a lick. If I drew a stick person, you wouldn’t know what it was. When I first came here, I was very particular about where I wanted to be [stationed in the museum], but I enjoy all of it now. When I go anywhere I’m very conscious of the design. I look up and see the ceiling. Working here has really opened my eyes to art.”

Favorite work of art in the museum: “The Bridge at Argenteuil,” by Claude Monet (1874)

Why it’s her favorite: “The name of the painting is ‘The Bridge at Argenteuil,’ but I always focus on the sailboat. It makes you feel like you’re on it and you’re about to go under the bridge. The impressionists always uplift me. They’re bright and airy and like a picture taken at that moment. Though I’m not in the picture, I feel like I am.”

Meghan Schindler