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Patrick Bringley grew up near Chicago, but he fell in love with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art when his mother brought him at age 11.

Around the same age, I, too, became enamored with the Met. While I had not visited in person (yet), I spent days roaming its hallowed halls along with Claudia and James as I read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

As fate would have it, after choosing to leave a job at The New Yorker in the wake of his older brother’s death from cancer, Patrick Bringley spends 10 years working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Answering an ad in The New York Times, Bringley arrives at the Met in the fall of 2008. 

He explains in his memoir All the Beauty in the World, “I had lost someone. I did not wish to move on from that. In a sense I didn’t wish to move at all.�

After a week of training � “protect life and property, in that order� � he dons the familiar dark blue suit and takes up his post. For new hires that means 12 hours on Fridays and Saturdays and eight hours on Sundays.

What is supposed to be a temporary respite lasts 10 years and brings him slowly back to life.

How many people can say they spend hours a day for years on end in the same room as masterpieces by Monet, Picasso, Renoir, and historical artifacts of the ancient Egyptians?

Bringley immerses himself in learning the background of the pieces of art and history surrounding him.

All the Beauty in the World is filled with stories about the Met’s collections, Bringley’s fellow guards, and the many colorful characters he meets among the museum’s millions of visitors who traipse up those iconic stone steps overlooking 82nd Street and Fifth Avenue. 

Art lover or not, his memoir is a lovely respite from whatever makes your mind race.

“I think sometimes we need permission to stop and adore,� he writes, “and a work of art grants us that.�

Bringley’s philosophical musings on life, art, and human nature are insightful and entertaining.

All the Beauty in the World is a lovely memoir of a decade in one man’s life, but it’s also a moving testament to the way that great works of art can act as a balm for our soul.