This is a memoir that recounts the ten years that the author spent as a museum guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It's a book about the museum and all the wonderful treasures that it holds, while also being a reflection on the importance of sometimes slowing down and taking a beat to look around us....
Patrick Bringley had a job at the New Yorker, a prestigious job, most of us would agree. It was not a job he loved but he was on his way up and he accepted that he needed to put in the time. It’s what everyone does, right? But then, his older brother Tom fell ill. When Tom died in 2008 at the age of 27, Patrick was devastated and he found that he couldn't return to his life and carry on as before.
Something inside him had shifted permanently. What he needed was a quiet place, where he could simply be still for a while. He says “I applied for the most straightforward job I could think of in the most beautiful place I knew.” As a guard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Patrick has an affinity for museums, he recalls childhood trips that his mother took him and his siblings on, where they were encouraged to engage with the art. In the depths of his grief, he felt that this was a place that could help him drop out of the world for a while. Having made up his mind, he quit his job at the New Yorker, applied for, and got a job as a guard at the museum.
The book begins with Patrick being shown the ropes on his first day as a museum guard. We see through his eyes, the behind-the-scenes activity at a large museum like the Met. The workdays of the almost invisible work force in the dark blue uniforms that you hardly ever notice when you're in these massive buildings. The guards spend more time with the treasures in this building than anyone else, silent, unobtrusive but always watchful.
Initially Patrick melts into his role, saying little, not engaging all that much with his colleagues, preferring to be at a slight remove. His assignments take him from one gallery to another throughout the museum, and during his long shifts which are mostly uneventful, he takes the opportunity to really look at the art that he spends hours standing in front of.
Over time, Patrick develops a method for approaching a work of art – he resists the temptation to immediately look for something that is singular or obvious, and he trains himself to not think anything at all when he first looks at it. To allow the art some time.
This is what makes him rid himself of an earlier bias that impressionists like Claude Monet produced pretty pictures but that this is all they were. When he applies his new approach to Monet’s work over the course of several days, he's transfixed by the mastery with which Monet renders sunlight and finds that for him the picture won’t conclude no matter how long he looks at it.
Picasso at the Met is the first major exhibition he works, and it's a record-breaking event, attracting more than ten thousand visitors on some days. Most of his colleagues don’t like being assigned to these massive exhibitions. It's too much of a circus for them, but Patrick doesn’t mind. He likes the energy.
Eventually, he begins to open up to his colleagues. He learns their back stories, starts to spend time with them outside of work and forms a few solid friendships. Most of the guards are foreign-born and have had interesting and challenging lives that have led them to their jobs here at the Met. As Patrick says, “no particular type of person sets out in life to become a museum guard”.
At the Met, he meets and works with guards who have commanded a frigate in the Bay of Bengal, driven a taxi, piloted a commercial airliner, framed houses, farmed, taught kindergarten, reported for newspapers.
Patrick also starts to welcome interactions with visitors. As a guard he does not engage visitors on his own and is perfectly happy to be silent. But when asked, he is, as he says, “perfectly botherable”, and enjoys telling them more about a work of art or providing interesting context, which is almost always appreciated.
Patrick ends up spending ten years at the Met. During this time, he gets married to his long time girlfriend. Five years in, they have a son and two years later a daughter. Patrick finds that he can no longer be untouched by the world and by the messiness of everyday life.
The arrival of his children soon puts an end to any idea of escape or stillness; but he finds that he doesn’t want to escape it anymore. He no longer wants to come home to a family that is fast asleep, he misses spending weekends and holidays with his wife and kids. And so he makes the decision to leave the Met.
His job at the Met gave him the simplicity and stillness he was seeking. But life can only be held back for so long.
On his last day, Patrick remembers what his mother made him and his siblings do on a museum visit more than 20 years ago, which is to not leave until they had each chosen a picture they loved best. And so, Patrick sets out, before clocking out for the final time, to find his favourite piece at the Met. There are several contenders, all of which he has spent many many hours with. In the end, he decides that the painting he loves the most is Crucifixion by Fra Angelico. He explains beautifully why this is the case.
This book isn't about hiding from the world; it’s about finding a way to heal enough to rejoin it. We might all need a sanctuary every now and then. But eventually, our spirit will find a way to pick itself up, dust itself off, and get on with this messy, grand, beautiful and sad thing called life. It’s just what we do.