is honored to announce
the Winner of the
18th Marfield Prize
for outstanding writing
about the arts in 2023 to
Patrick Bringley
author of
“All the Beauty in the World:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me”
Mr. Bringley will receive $10,000
as the Marfield award winner for 2023.
Judges Naveen Kumar, Peter Marks, and Tanya Olson praise the 2023 Marfield Prize winner:
Patrick Bringley’s All The Beauty In The World illustrates the transformative power of art. In clear and elegant prose, Bringley recounts the profound realizations and awakenings he underwent during his decade-long tenure as a museum guard, immersed in an environment conducive to quiet contemplation, self-reflection, and the appreciation of aesthetic beauty. A work of art, Bringley persuades the reader, is not a puzzle to decode nor a treasure reserved for the elite, but a balm accessible to anyone in need.
“You don’t forget your first visit to the Met. I was eleven years old and had traveled to New York from our home outside Chicago with my mother. I remember a long subway ride to the remote-sounding Upper East Side, and I remember the storybook feel of that neighborhood: doormen in livery, proud stone apartment towers, wide famous avenues—first Park, then Madison, then Fifth. We must have approached on East 82nd Street because my first glimpse of the museum was of its generous stone entry stairs, which served as an amphitheater for a saxophone player. The Met’s facade was impressive in a familiar sort of way, very columny and Greek. The magical part was that as we drew nearer it kept growing wider and wider, so that even out front by the hot dog carts and the geysering fountains, we were never able to get the entire museum into view. I immediately understood it as a place of impossible breadth.
We climbed the marble stairs and passed a threshold into the Great Hall. As Maureen, my mom, queued up to make our “suggested donation” (even a nickel would have gotten us in), she encouraged me to wander a lobby that seemed no less grand than Grand Central Terminal’s, and full of the same energy from people preparing to venture someplace. Through the entrance on one end of the hall I could make out a snowstorm of blinding white statuary, perhaps Greek. Through an entrance on the other side, a sandy-colored tomb was just visible, surely the way to ancient Egypt. Directly ahead, a wide, straight, majestic run of stairs concluded in a color-splashed canvas appearing as large and taut as a ship sail. We affixed our little tin entry pins to our collars, and it seemed only natural that we should keep climbing.”
Patrick Bringley worked for ten years as a guard in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Prior to that, he worked in the editorial events office at The New Yorker magazine. He lives with his wife and children in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. All the Beauty in the World is his first book.
The Marfield Prize Committee would like to thank all volunteer readers, both Club members and community members, who generously gave their time and insights to read and rate dozens of books that were considered during the initial phase of the 2023 Marfield Prize.
The Marfield Prize or the National Award for Arts Writing is given annually by the Arts Club of Washington to the author of a nonfiction book about the visual, literary, media, or performing arts. Established to generate broader interest in the arts among general readers, the award celebrates prose that is clear, eloquent and inspiring, creating a strong connection with the arts and artists. Books are judged by a distinguished independent panel of judges. First given in 2006, the prize's endowment was established by a devoted and generous Arts Club member Jeannie S. Marfield.