‘The stillness was a gift’

When Patrick Bringley was mourning the premature death of his brother, he decided that he needed a completely different pace of life to the hectic media career he had been leading. A chance but transformational visit of another museum with his mother gave him the idea of becoming a guard at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The long hours spent contemplating art works at the Met, some of which had been created hundreds of years ago, opened Patrick's eyes to how similar our emotional and creative responses to life-changing events like grief can be, no matter who or where we are. Some 500 people work as guards at the Museum and it was their camaraderie and wisdom that also helped Patrick to overcome his loss.

Patrick's memoir of his time at the Met is called All the Beauty in the World.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar

Producer: Radek Boschetty

(Photo: Patrick Bringley, in a smart dark blue uniform and tie, stands in a foyer of the Met Museum in New York with visitors in the background. Credit: Ross White)

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