He spent 10 years in a museum. This is what he learned

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 25 August 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, we go to one of the world’s largest museums, so a former guard can teach us new ways to appreciate art. Patrick Bringley was a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a decade. He recently wrote a memoir about his time there titled All the Beauty in the World. He takes Lilah on a tour of the museum, and they explore how to appreciate the nuances of the space: everything from how lighting changes how loud people talk in a gallery, to why it is important to visit museums alone. How do you figure out if you like Van Gogh? Should you be asking that question in the first place?

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We love hearing from you. You can email us at [email protected]. We’re on Twitter @ftweekendpod, and Lilah is on Instagram and Twitter @lilahrap.

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Links:

– Patrick Bringley’s memoir is called All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me

– The Water Lilies by Monet that Patrick and Lilah were looking at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437137

– A recent review of the current Met show of Van Gogh’s Cypresses, by Ariella Budick: https://on.ft.com/3qDrKRB

– An FT series on the world’s best house museums: https://on.ft.com/3KU6tdk

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Join us at the FT Weekend festival, on Saturday September 2 at Kenwood House in London. It’ll be a day of debates, tastings, Q&As and more. For £20 off your festival pass, use promo code FTWeekendPod here: http://ft.com/festival

Special FT subscription offers for Weekend listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial, are here: http://ft.com/weekendpodcast.

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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner and Sam Giovinco

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Okay, here we are. Fifth Avenue, East 81st. Man, it's so big. It is so, so big.
0:13.2	I'm standing on a street corner in New York City next to a hot dog stand, staring up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
0:24.5	It's monstrous and grand. It has these huge columns, and there are hundreds of people sitting on the stone steps out front.
0:30.5	The Met is one of the most recognizable institutions in my city. And it houses one of the most significant collections of art in the world.
0:41.1	To a lot of people, the Met can seem impenetrable.
0:44.9	But I'm here to meet a man that's really good at getting it to open up.
0:49.3	Hi.
0:51.1	How are you, Patrick?
0:52.9	Got a million things.
0:54.1	It's so nice to meet you.
0:55.1	It's nice to meet you. How's everything been?
0:57.2	Right. Thank you so much for doing.
0:59.0	I'm excited.
0:59.9	Yeah, that would be fun.
1:02.2	Patrick Bringley was a guard at the Met for 10 years.
1:06.7	When Patrick was 25, his brother died from cancer, and he wanted to change his life.
1:12.3	He just wanted to stand still for a while, somewhere beautiful.
1:16.1	So he shook everything up.
1:18.5	We sit down together on the steps, and he tells me the story.
1:22.5	I was at the New Yorker in their events planning department, and in a lot of ways it was a wonderful job. But while I
1:28.4	was there, my brother got ill. And so all of a sudden I was spending time just in hospital rooms
1:34.8	and by Tom's bedside. And I suddenly felt like something very momentous was going on there in those
	...

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