“The mornings are church mouse quiet. It’s just me and the Rembrandts (1606-1669) and the Botticellis…” (1445-1510). Patrick Bringley wears the dark-blue suit, a pair of the yearly issued shoes (there’s even a sock allowance) and two gold lapel pins of guards at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where he served for a decade. Three screens show Masterworks.
“When you stand for a living, it’s standing, stretching, pacing…” He demonstrates the leaning posture adopted by staff. Later we learn the established bench position for catching forty winks. “Time pools here.
There’s just a present.” Reflections on the face in a Tintoretto (1518–94) show knowledge of technique as well as admiration.
Its author /performer calls this “a story about art, an extraordinary workplace, and the fellowship I discovered in the wake of a loss.” We learn about two years spent with his beloved, 26 year-old brother dying of cancer. Description of his remarkable sibling is vivid. At the time, Bringley worked at The New Yorker (not as a writer).
After Tom’s death, he needed something quiet. “It’s like you fall asleep in a movie and never get to finish.” Every day, Bringley entered the museum by the side door where deliveries are made. “Yield to art in transit,” signs declared.
At the start, guards are assigned to one gallery. After four months they’re moved every day. “These people knew life like a guttering candle…here is adoration and lamentation…” he comments about Renaissance paintings of Jesus’s “passing.’
There are incidents. One young man tried to climb into the lap of a statue of Venus. “He was very nice about getting off. ‘Didn’t know the rules.’” The visitor then asked, “So all these statues, they broke in here?” A mother with little boys inquired where the dinosaurs were. He sent them to knights in armor and mummies.
“When I make my rounds I meet gods,” Bringley tells us. “The Koran says God is nearer to us than the jugular vein.” A 20 square yard, hand woven carpet and a Peter Bruegel (1525-1569) inspire thoughts. Audience volunteers are asked to read visitor questions aloud. The guard is knowledgeable, respectful, perceptive.
Fifty or sixty of the museum guards are foreign born. Most have purveyed other skills/talents. Bringley makes friends with a man from Togo, a former banking executive with whom he never would otherwise have spoken. This anecdote features his new friend copying a Chinese Moon Gate as entrance to a retirement garden in Ghana.
We circle ‘round to Bringley’s outside life with his wedding (initially scheduled on the day of his brother’s death) and birth of his children. Father and child as a subject for painting is illustrated. Isn’t it curious, he muses, that all the babies are calm and content, not screaming, burping, flailing little beings? Unfinished art – like his children – is represented.
Patrick Bringley has us from the beginning. His story is thoughtful, sensitive, and original. Knowledge about art is elucidating and often illustrative of his life outside. Appreciation – more, wonder is palpable. This is a meditation on perception, both visual and emotional, and, in the end about life.
Dominic Dromgoole agreed to direct interested in “the purpose of art.” Every shift and gesture appears natural and spontaneous. The author/actor is given time to appear as if recalling, to pause as if observing. Silences are adroitly employed. Minimal audience participation seems friendly rather than an avoidance of scripting.
Screens display well selected images of art, sometimes in detail. Projection design by Austin Switzer.
All the Beauty in the World was first produced as a special presentation at the 2024 Charleston Literary Festival, Charleston, South Carolina.
All the Beauty in the World
EXTENDED THROUGH MAY 25, 2025
Written and Performed by Patrick Bringley
Directed by Dominic Dromgoole
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th Street
“Since the publication of his book, Bringley, who has an undergraduate degree from New York University and a master’s in history from Hunter College, has led private tours at the Met. He has also delivered lectures at museums across the country.” The New York Times
All the Beauty in the World is now in its 10th hardcover printing.
