All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me 나는 메트로폴리탄 미술관의 경비원입니다 by Patrick Bringley

" 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 glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought 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 the reader’s 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.                                 

                                                                                                                                 from Amazon

흥미로운 책이다. 미술관에서 '경비원'으로 근무하는 것에 대해 흥미를 갖게 하는 작품이었다. 예술을 즐기고 예술과 가깝게 살기를 원하는 사람들이라면 이런 직업도 좋을 수 있을 거 같다는 생각을 하게 해주는 작품이었다. 저자뿐만 아니라 같이 근무하는 동료들의 경력도 다양하다. 예술을 좋아해서 근무하는 사람도 있지만 전혀 관심을 갖지 않고 시작한 사람들도 있는 거 같다. 하지만 모두가 나름의 긍지를 가지고 예술작품을 지키고 있는 거 같다. 미술관을 자주 다니던 시절이 있었지만 전혀 생각해보지 못한 직업의 영역이었다. 이 책은 'The Metropolitan Museum of Art(메트로폴리탄 미술관)'에 대한 저자 나름의 소개, 가족들에 대한 사랑과 상실감, 예술 작품들에 대한 저자 나름의 해석, 같이 근무하는 경비원들과 그들의 삶에 대한 이야기 등이 차분하게 묘사되고 있다. 작품에 등장하는 삽화들이 저자가 언급하는 예술 작품들을 이해하는데 도움이 되었지만 작품들에 대해서나 미술관에 대한 조사를 위해서 인터넷 검색을 많이 할 수 밖에 없었다. 문장이나 표현이 어려울 수 있기 때문에 미리 보기를 통해서 확인하는 게 좋을 거 같고 이런 미술장르에 취미가 없는 독자는 흥미가 없을 수도 있다. 

-My earliest feeling about art was that it belonged to a kind of separate, moonlit world, and this was my mother's influence.....

- As a guard, I will be watching countless visitors respond in their own ways to the curious feeling....

- It was curious, the way great art collapsed so simply into so ordinary a setting .....

- Lamentation or Pieta ..... I saw she wept because her heart was full as well as breaking, because the picture inspired love in her, bringing both solace and pain. When we adore, we apprehend beauty. When we lament, we see the wisdom of the ancient adage "Life is suffering." .....

- The locker room is loud with the clatter of metal doors swinging shut and a hundred conversations proceeding in a dozen languages.....

- As with geological time or astronomical space, we can glimpse the staggering breadth of our ancestry when we devote energy to doing so, but the moment we fall back on our heels, we forget these realities. I experience a rush of gratitude for museums as places to return to and remember ....

- I realize how much sensory experience falls through the cracks between our words. The skill and panache of the calligraphers ......

- If you want to know if something is funny, see if it makes you laugh. If you want to know if a painting is beautiful, see if it evokes an equivalent response, one as definite as laughter usually quieter and shyer to emerge ....

- Monet, I realize, has painted that aspect of the world that can't be domesticated by vision ; what Emerson called the "flash and sparkle" of it ....

- not only do I like our job, I am offended by the idea I will ever not like it ! It would be an indecency, a stupidity, even betrayal to find fault with such peaceable, honest work.....

- Guarding art is a solitary pursuit ....

- ....The glory of so-called unskilled jobs is that people with a fantastic range of skills and backgrounds work them .... They are from five continents and five boroughs. They love the art or they're different to it ....

- .... about a funny crack I overheard in the locker room the other day: "I told her 'We aren't security guards, ma'am ... we're security artists."

- If you don't die young, you're in the curious position of thinking you've grown all the way up ....

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