All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley 2023
I took this book out of the library because I thought that, based on the title, it was art history or art criticism focused on the Met and its fantastic holdings and collections. Wrong! but happily so.
This fine book is Bringley’s first attempt at writing a book, and he either has a great talent or a great editor, and in all likelihood, both. His story of serving ten years as a guard at the Met is driven by the parallel story of his older brother Tom’s death from cancer at 26. Bringley had been working as a low level staffer at ‘The New Yorker’, focused on external events like the New Yorker Festival, when his brother became ill. During the difficult months that followed, Bringley married and made the decision to leave his job and become a guard at the Met, a position that offered him seemingly endless hours to dwell amidst beauty and to think of important life questions Whether in the Egyptian collection with its Temple of Dendur or standing in the room filled with Titians, Tintorettos, and Raphaels, Bringley developed an elevated sensitivity to the healing powers of art.
The book has given me an entirely new take on those semi-invisible folks in the blue security jackets standing along the wall or in the corner. Bringley gives them a fully developed humanity providing personal histories and stories of their interactions. Many of the guards are foreign-born with Africans, Albanians, and Russians prominently represented. Never again will I look at the person in the corner in the same way, and apparently, they are looking at us, too. Here’s Bringley on that topic: “With this thought, suddenly the strangers in the room appear to be wildly beautiful. They have good faces. They have eloquent walks. They’re motive; their eyebrows jump about. They are daughters who look like their mothers’ pasts, fathers who look like their sons’ futures. They are young, old, blooming, decaying, and in every sense they are real. I strain to use my eye as an investigatory tool…I look for meaning in the way people wear their clothes and carry their weight, hold hands with their boyfriends and girlfriends or don’t, style their hair, cut their beards, meet or avoid my eye, show pleasure or impatience of boredom or distraction on their face or in their posture or through their gait. And when I find I can discover no definite meaning in most of what I see, I take pleasure in the flash and sparkle of the scene.” Who knew?
There’s a useful index of the art works mentioned and a fine bibliography for those interested in further reading. The book and its author have taken off in recent months with the paperback edition’s publication in November, 2024 after going through 10 printings in hardback. Bringley has also written a play based on the book and lectures at major museums around the country. I’ll give him the final word in this review: “Art, I think, often derives from those moments when we would wish the world to stand still. We perceive something so beautiful, or true, or majestic, or sad, that we can’t simply take it in stride. We believe in it, even if, having to move on, we take the one last look and stride off.”
For anyone who loves to visit museums or who has ever wondered how those guards can stand on those hard marble floors for hours, this is a book worth reading.