All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, by Patrick Bringley

[sophia_sol]

A nonfiction book I listened to as an audiobook. I went into it with the understanding that it's a memoir about a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and on the perspective that spending SO many hours around the same pieces of art over years gave him. And it is that!

But it's also about more than that: what kinds of things led him to become a museum security guard, and about what the job of museum security job entails, and about people-watching and people-interacting. And, over all, about the huge impact of grief on a person's life. The author's brother died as a young adult, and it was in the aftermath of that loss that he decided he needed a job with less pressure than the kind of promising office job he'd had, one that would allow him time to process.

It's a beautiful book, thoughtful and meaningful and interesting. His reflections on art really are good! As is everything else! I loved it.

Edit: but also pauraque has a really good point about the unexamined privilege in the pov the author is coming from in their review

Comments

[pauraque]

This sounds right up my alley. "I wonder what the security guard is thinking about and what his life is like" is exactly the kind of thought that would occur to me while in a museum!

[sophia_sol]

it's somehow not something I've ever thought about before, but I am definitely going to think about it in the future, when I'm next in a museum big enough to have security guards!

[genarti]

Oooh, this sounds really interesting! I'm only sometimes a memoir person, but one of the surefire ways to make one interesting to me is to have it be about some job I don't know much about. And I'm definitely curious about the life of a museum security guard!

[sophia_sol]

yeah I much prefer memoirs that have a specific and interesting bounded focus like this, rather than being just like, a person talking generally about their life. it makes it much more likely that the memoir will have a coherent narrative shape to it, rather than feeling meandering and pointless! and that the person will have thought enough about their life to be able to say interesting things about it.

[chestnut_pod]

I think you would really enjoy Hisham Matar's A Month in Siena if you're into the Ekphrastic Grief Memoir as a thing.

[sophia_sol]

ok that book sounds fascinating too! I didn't know I was into ekphrastic grief memoirs but maybe it turns out I am!

[chestnut_pod]

It’s SO GOOD. It’s an absolutely amazing work of art as a book as well as an incredibly moving story.

[sophia_sol]

oooooh I am all the more interested then!