I can see why Kaye Wilkinson Barley said she treasures this book. My friend, Donna, recommended Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. They are both right. It’s a beautiful, sometimes moving, book.
Patrick Bringley’s older brother, Tom died in 2008. He was only twenty-six. Bringley was lost, mired in grief, and his job at The New Yorker did nothing to make him feel better. On a whim, he applied to be a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a job he kept for ten years until he no longer felt as if he needed that to get him through his grief. Instead, he had come out the other side, with a wife and two children, and “Instead I have a life to live.”
Bringley felt as if the job as a guard was the most straightforward job he could think of in the most beautiful place he knew. “Great books and great art felt that tremendous to me.” And, room-by-room, as he highlights various pieces of art, Bringley shares the works that were beautiful to him, talks about their meaning to him. He talks about history and his own philosophy, and what he learns from his personal favorites. “I am sometimes not sure which is the more remarkable: that life lives up to great paintings, or that great paintings live up to life.”
Patrick Bringley manages to bring art and life together. He talks about his brother throughout the book, but towards the end, talks about his life with his wife, and then his two children. It’s a cycle of life that he might not have recognized without the art at the museum. He enjoys his interactions with the other guards and with the visitors. “There is a heartening rhythm to it that helps put me back in sync with the world. Grief is among other things a loss of rhythm. You lose someone, it puts a hole in your life, and for a time you huddle down in that hole.” The museum, the art, the interactions, all allowed Bringley to find his way out of that hole.
All the Beauty in the World represents a personal journey. But, Bringley takes readers along, using the art and the museum as a guide. When he finishes, he includes a guide to the pieces he referenced in the book, and includes accession numbers to help people find those pieces.
If you’ve been to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Patrick Bringley’s book may allow you to look at from a new perspective. If you’ve never been, you’ll want to venture in, looking at it through a guard’s eyes. As I said, it’s a beautiful, moving book.
Patrick Bringley’s website is https://www.patrickbringley.com/
All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley. Simon & Schuster, 2023. ISBN 9781982163303 (hardcover), 240p.
FTC Full Disclosure – Library book
This sounds interesting Lesa, I just put it on hold at my library. My son lives across Central Park from the Met and I’ve decided to go there for a few hours every time we visit. I always enjoy the books recommended by you and Kaye.
Oh, I’m jealous Susan, that you can just go for a few hours. You don’t have to feel obligated to see everything!
Thank you! I know you’re going to enjoy this one.
Oh, Susan, how I envy you those Met visits!
I truly do treasure this book. It, just like From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg, are books to pick up and re-read again and again. Having free reign in a museum without the crowds? Time to just sit and stare at a piece of art that moves you to joyful tears, to ponder and just absorb it? Heaven!
I agree, Kaye. It’s sort of like being the only person in the library in the early morning. I’m going to miss that.