All the Beauty in the World (The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me) by Patrick Bringley
This little book by Mr. Patrick Bringley is what I call a
sleeper. It is a short and pleasant read by a most unlikely author. The title refers to the art contained in New
York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the author is a man who worked there for
ten years as a security guard. My wife
and I were members of Chicago’s Art Institute for many years and have visited most
of the major galleries of Europe in our travels. In all those years we have
never run across a book by one of the museum guards.
Bringley takes the security guard job after his older
brother dies of a deadly form of cancer. It could be penance or perhaps a
search for peace, but it provides a suitable station for him to observe his
fellows, the visitors, and of course the art itself. He glories in the fact
that this kind of unskilled job attracts a huge variety of ages, skills, races,
and religions, whereas a Manhattan lawyer’s office attracts abysmally similar
types. He quotes one retiree saying, “It really isn’t a bad job. Your feet hurt, but nothing else does.”
The visitors obviously also come from every corner of the
world and he takes pleasure in finding meaning in them. He revels in observing
the clothes people choose to wear and how they wear them. He finds interest in
how they style their hair and how they hold the hands of a companion. He
reflects on how some avoid his eye, how some have continuous questions, and how
others express rapt attention or boredom.
He insists he takes no meaning from this but just the pleasure of
noticing the huge span of reactions.
As the chapters progress, the Art becomes more central. His
developing approach to it is deceptively simple. “The first step,” he says, “is
to do nothing, to just watch.” Art, “above
all needs time to apprehend and a guard has all the time in the world.” Let the
work perform its work on you. Over time certain pictures or objects grow on
you, become more abundant, or as he says, they simply “won’t conclude.” Then
you can absorb “the holiness of that moment.”
This does not mean you should look without knowing. Knowing develops
from looking and each thing you learn about an artist and his work deepens your
ability to look at it. “Too many people
think the museum is a place to learn about art, rather than from it.”
At the end of his ten years, having acquired along the way a
wife and family, he recognizes that nature favors hardiness over simplicity and
that his life of standing, observing, and learning must end. You can only watch
and inhale so long. Sooner or later you
have to face the real world which is not nearly as orderly as a museum.
Loved this one. I
give it a 4.5 out of 5
