CANR
WORK TITLE: ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD
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WEBSITE: https://www.patrickbringley.com
CITY: Brooklyn
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COUNTRY: United States
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PERSONAL
Male.
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CAREER
Security guard and writer. New Yorker, New York, NY, editorial events office staff; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, security guard, ten years.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
[open new]For many people there is no refuge like art, and Patrick Bringley brought his immersion in one of the world’s most famous museums to the page in his debut memoir. Bringley’s career began with a stint in the editorial events office at New Yorker magazine. When his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer, he decided to opt out of keeping up with the Joneses and acquire a job as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in Manhattan. After a decade there, he reflected on his experiences in All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me.
As he recounts in the memoir, Bringley was led to the Met by both his brother’s untimely death and a sense of disenchantment with whatever glamour might have been attached to his work at the New Yorker. He thus bounced from one famous cultural institution to another, finding solace not only in the priceless artworks on display throughout the museum’s halls, from all around the world, but also in the people. His colleagues, some of whom he lovingly profiles, included artists, musicians, immigrants, hardy proletarians, everyday comedians, and drifting visionaries. Egyptian mummies spur him to wax poetic on human mortality, while disoriented tourists prompt him to recognize how difficult it is to grasp the fullness of all the beauty in the museum’s halls.
A Kirkus Reviews writer observed that Bringley draws noteworthy connections between works of arts and his own life experiences, in passages ranging from “informative and relatable” to bordering on “saccharine.” The reviewer suggested that while All the Beauty in the World may be lacking in “sophisticated insights” into the Met’s inner workings, Bringley offers “interesting backstories,” and the “childlike simplicity of the prose suits his sense of wonder.” The reviewer deemed Bringley’s museum memoir “an emotionally cathartic stroll through the hallowed halls of a beloved institution.”[close new]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, November 15, 2022, review of All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me.
ONLINE
Authors Unbound, https://authorsunbound.com/ (December 18, 2022), author profile.
Patrick Bringley website, https://www.patrickbringley.com (December 18, 2022).
No bio.
PATRICK
BRINGLEY
Writer of Nonfiction
Memoirist
Travels from: New York NY
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Patrick Bringley
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“An astounding book about an astounding place. All the Beauty in the World is at once a keenly intelligent examination of the power of art and a profoundly empathetic exploration of the workaday culture that makes art visible to all.” – Alex Ross, New Yorker staff writer and author of The Rest is Noise
Patrick Bringley worked for ten years as a guard in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to that, he worked in the editorial events office at The New Yorker magazine. Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.
To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns. All the Beauty in the World is his first book, and is a fascinating, revelatory portrait of the the Met in the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff. All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
Bringley, Patrick ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD Simon & Schuster (NonFiction None) $27.99 2, 14 ISBN: 978-1-98216-330-3
A former museum guard recounts the decade he spent at one of the world's iconic museums.
Disenchanted with a seemingly glamorous post-graduation job at the New Yorker and heartbroken by the untimely death of a beloved brother, Bringley deliberately sought solace in art. At the Met, he gradually forged connections with co-workers from a wide variety of backgrounds, finding a kind of home at the museum. While the author employs the rather hackneyed formula of jumping between past and present, one can't help but be moved by connections he makes between the works over which he stood guard, and the childlike simplicity of the prose suits his sense of wonder. Amused by the ghoulish questions posed by a parade of schoolchildren through the Egyptian mummy section, he reflects on the futility of the mummification process. "The body doesn't make it," he writes. "Believe all you want that some piece of a person is immortal, but a significant part is mortal, inescapably, and mad science will not stop it from breaking down." The author is also intrigued by museumgoers who lack a sense of direction. "I like baffled people," he writes. "I think they are right to stumble around the Met discombobulated .None of us knows much about this subject--the world and all of its beauty." While some of Bringley's personal responses to masterworks are informative and relatable, others border on the saccharine. Writing about a Monet landscape, he notes, "When I experience such a thing, I feel faint but definite tremors in my chest." If these musings sometimes fail to stir us, the accompanying illustrations by McMahon strike just the right balance between simplicity and emotional complexity. Readers seeking sophisticated insights into the inner workings of the Met should look elsewhere, but Bringley offers enough interesting backstories to keep the pages turning.
An emotionally cathartic stroll through the hallowed halls of a beloved institution.
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"Bringley, Patrick: ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A726309419/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d1d7499b. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.