The widow of a maintenance worker who plunged 60 feet to his death while working on a glass ceiling at the Metropolitan Museum said yesterday she plans to sue the venerable institution because her husband’s fatal plunge could have been avoided.
“There’s no way he should have fallen,” said Violet Kielar, whose husband, Marcin, was waterproofing a skylight on Friday when he fell through paneling and landed on the floor of the Temple of Dendur installation.
Marcin Kielar was an experienced worker who did maintenance on high-rises and “was always very careful with the [safety] belts,” Violet told The Post yesterday.
“That glass was supposed to hold 300 pounds, and he was only 200.
“We are considering a lawsuit against the museum,” she added. “He was wearing a harness.”
Law-enforcement sources said earlier that Kielar, 26, was not wearing a safety harness. They said a counterweight attached to the panel he was working on suddenly crashed through the glass, pulling him down with it.
The Polish immigrant was working for R. Smith Restoration on the panels above the installation in the Met’s Egyptian wing when he fell to the marble floor in front of at least six museum visitors.
Kielar’s widow, also 26, gave birth recently to their second daughter. She said she and her husband emigrated from Poland 16 years ago and attended grammar school together at Holy Cross in Maspeth, Queens.
“My 3-year-old daughter has not been told,” she said. “Yesterday, she asked what was happening. We told her not to cry. I don’t think she understands what has happened.”
Violet Kielar, who was trained as an art historian, said she and her husband had often visited the museum together.
“We were there so many times,” she said. “We had been to the temple because I studied Egyptian art. It’s ironic.
“This is so unreal,” she added. “It hasn’t hit me.”
The Egyptian exhibit area is closed to visitors until Tuesday.
The museum sometimes rents out the temple for parties at $60,000 a bash but said there had been no such plans for the weekend.
“There have occasionally been accidents, but nothing in a gallery area,” said Met spokesman Harold Holzer. “This is the first time this has happened.”
But records showed that Kielar’s death was the second in recent memory – in 2001, a man inspecting air-conditioning equipment fell through an air shaft for reasons that were never determined.
An autopsy was pending to determine Kielar’s official cause of death. Funeral services are being planned for early this week.
With Post Wire Services