All the Beauty in the World

Who would have thought that the outstanding art book of the year would be written not by a curator or an art historian or even an artist but by a museum guard? * Sunday Times, *Art Book of the Year* * Greek vases, an Iroquois turtle rattle, Picassos. His every word about them is illuminating. The big picture is arts power to console and unite * Financial Times *Best Books of 2023* * Consoling and beautiful * Guardian * Hauntingly beautiful ... elegant ... a work of art as luminous as the old masters' paintings that comforted [Bringley] in his grief * Daily Mail Online * Bringley is a marvellous guide ... All the Beauty in the World succeeds joyously * Daily Telegraph * Told with real literary gusto and an impressive command of pace and shape. After finishing this book, plenty of sensitive readers will be desperate to become museum guards * Sunday Times * An uplifting memoir that recalls his time behind the scenes there with colour, pathos and flair * Mail on Sunday * I loved Bringleys book. It taught me how to get more out of museums, how to pay attention, and how to think differently about time * Financial Times * This absorbing memoir is also a beautifully written manual on how to appreciate art, and life. It's a must read for art lovers * Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring * Wonderful. If you have ever been to a museum and stood motionless before an exhibit, if you've ever looked at a painting and found yourself crying, if you have ever wondered how a sculptor could find a human body inside a block of stone, this book is for you * Natalie Haynes, author of A Thousand Ships * This book makes me yearn to have Patrick Bringley at my side in every museum I will visit for the rest of my life. Having a copy of All the Beauty in the World in my purse will be the next best thing * Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl * A wonderful memoir * Laura Hackett, Sunday Times * An astounding book about an astounding place * Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise * An intimate perspective on one of the world's greatest institutions. But All the Beauty in the World is about much more: the strange human impulse to make art, the mystery of experiencing art, and what role art can play in our lives. What a gift * Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind * This book will change your experience of museums, connecting you with the stories of those who make them possible and revealing the layers of wonder that gather in the quiet halls where art meets modern life. Bringley's keen, warm-hearted dispatches remind us - as art itself should - of our common humanity * Mark Vanhoenacker, author of Imagine a City * Intimate and fascinating * Town and Country * Perhaps most importantly, though, All the Beauty in the World is a story about grief and about beauty, and about how inextricably the two are linked * Vox * Nails the very particular thing of spending your days in galleries, and how close you grow to the works and the people that come to see them * Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, Elle Decoration * Illuminating and transformative * Kerry James Marshall, Artist * A profound homage to the marvels of a world-class museum and a radiant chronicle of grief, perception, and a renewed embrace of life * Booklist * Prepare to be wooed by this memoir, which doubles as a loving memoir of the Met from one of its most inside insiders: Patrick Bringliey, who worked at the museum as a guard for a decade. * LitHub * A beautiful tale about beauty. It is also a tale about grief, balancing solitude and comradeship, and finding joy in both the exalted and the mundane * Washington Post * Bringley's memoir abounds with small details ... but it also has grander subjects to address - namely, solitude, the staying power of art, and grief. ... In the end, All the Beauty in the World is an empathetic chronicle of one museum, the works collected there and the people who keep it running - all re

Patrick Bringley worked for ten years as a guard in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Previously, he worked in the editorial events office at the New Yorker magazine. He lectures widely at museums and leads public and private tours of the Met (more information can be found at patrickbringley.com). He lives with his wife and children in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. All the Beauty in the World is his first book.