All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

by Patrick Bringley

Book Overview

A best book of the year from New York Public Library, NPR, the Financial Times, Book Riot, and the Sunday Times (London).

A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.

Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1982163305
• ISBN13: 9781982163303
• Release Date: February 2023
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Favorite Read of the Year

“Too many visitors think of the Met as a museum of Art History, where the objective is to learn about art rather than from it. Too many suppose there are experts who know all the right answers and it isn’t a layman’s place to dig into objects and extract what meaning they can. The more time I spend in the Met, the more convinced I am it isn’t a museum of art history, not principally. Its interests reach up to the heavens and down into worm-ridden tombs and touch on virtually every aspect of how it feels and what it means to live in the space between. There aren’t experts about that. I believe we take art seriously when we try to discern what, at close quarters, it reveals. It feels like the more I explore, the more I will see, the more I’ll understand how very little I’ve seen. The world feels like a surfeit of details that refuse to coalesce.” - Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World This may well be my favorite read of the year. When left with grief of his older brother’s premature passing, former New Yorker employee Patrick Bringley turns away from a cutthroat desk job toward quiet, contemplative days as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We navigate the museum by way of Patrick’s own advice and memories, from pieces he’s personally struck by to snippets of conversations with museum attendees and fellow guards alike. Interwoven with reminders of his brother and the ways in which grief and its process can both color and change our perspective, this collection moves fluidly between truthful heartache and wistful dreaming. Thoughtful, grounded, and beautifully ordinary, readers can relate to the simplicity of Bringley’s voice and delight in the remarkable wisdom in his musings about art and life. This work of nonfiction is something I will keep with me for quite some time. Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the chance to spend quite a few moments with it; they won’t be my last!