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A Night at the Library with Author Patrick Bringley

Dedham Reads 2024: Museums All Around Us

Please join us for the culminating program of Dedham’s annual community-wide reading event!

Dedham Reads Together 2024: Museums all Around Us features our adult book selection All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley, who will be with us in person to speak about his book and his experiences as museum guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

This event is open to the public FREE OF CHARGE through funding from the Dedham Library Innovation Team, with support by the Dedham Public Library and the Friends of the Dedham Library. REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED for this event. 

Schedule of Events:

6:30 pm: Light appetizers, gathering, and book sale (appetizers generously provided by Wegmans Westwood)
7-8:00 pm: Program with Patrick Bringley, Q&A
8-9:30 pm: Book sale, book signing, desserts, cash bar, and raffles (Library services close at 8 pm)

About the Book & Author:

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum and Me by Patrick Bringley (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard.

A best book of the year from:

-New York Public Library
-NPR
-The Financial Times
-Book Riot
-The Sunday Times (London)

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.

In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers. --Provided by the Publisher

Please email Brittany at btuttle.ddm@minlib.net with questions about this, and any other, Dedham Reads Together 2024: Museums All Around Us event. 

Artwork on display at this event includes a Two-Person Exhibit by Dedham Art Association artists Gianna Bird and Sheila Davis, a Free Little Art Gallery, and multimedia projects from MOLA and Dedham Public Schools students.

Dedham ECEC: samples of mini paintings and a scrapbook of students participating in other activities related to museums and collections
Dedham Elementary Schools: a variety of recycled materials artwork, including origami, bottle cap art, and animal sculptures
Dedham Middle School: Makerspace mini canvases to demonstrate their idea of what home and belonging means to them, and two separate LEGO sets, Trafalgar Square and Starry Night
Dedham High School: Makerspace activity of transformed metal tins into curated miniature museum exhibits based on their own personal interests; this is a collaboration between the HS Library & Art Department

Dedham Reads Together is a collaborative annual initiative presented by Dedham Public Library, Dedham Public Schools, and Dedham Library Innovation Team to promote literacy and community in Dedham, MA through shared reads and activities.

Thank you for supporting DLIT, our Town's school and public libraries, and The Friends of Dedham Library!
 

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