Bistro Bookers
Next meeting: December 9, 2025
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Book title: All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me
Author: Patrick Bringley
Discussed by: Robert Poczik
Book summary from the publisher:
Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamourous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought that he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew.
To his surprise and your delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns.
In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All the Beauty in the World is an “empathic” (The New York Times Book Review), “moving” (NPR), “consoling, and beautiful” (The Guardian) portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.
Event details
Date and time: Tuesday, December 9 @ 4:00 pm
Venue: Amherst Center for Senior Services (370 John James Audubon Parkway, Amherst, NY 14228)
Suggested donation of $2 per person is greatly appreciated. Your donation helps Bistro Bookers to continue to hold these reviews and donate back to our community literacy programs. Your donation also allows us to purchase the featured book if necessary and give the reviewer a gift for their time.
You MUST reserve your seat by 3:00 pm on Friday, December 5 for this event by calling 716-636-3051 and providing your name and phone number. If you call to reserve for more than one person, you must provide each person’s name and phone number.
Coming up
No review in January
Tuesday, February 10, 2026 @ 4:00 pm: The Phantom of Forest Lawn: Romance and Redemption in the City of the Dead by Robert Brighton, reviewed by Jennifer Kovach (Executive Administrative Assistant, Forest Lawn Cemetery Group; Research Assistant to author Robert Brighton)
See you at the next review!