I worked for a decade as a guard at the Met, New York’s two million square foot art museum. Today Simon＆ Schuster publishes my memoir, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD. AMA about masterpieces, art heists, watchful twelve-hour shifts, and the Met’s extr...

Hey Patrick! Another former Met guard here. Your book is on its way to my house, and I can't wait to read it. Two simple questions for you:

1) What was your favorite section, art-wise?

2) What was your favorite section for people watching?

Hey thanks so much! I'm sure I'll see you around many times more, mystery guard. Favorite section art-wise: the old master paintings, though there are many close seconds. Favorite for people watching: probably Egyptian, because EVERYONE goes to Egyptian, everyone from schoolkids to tweedy professors to weird new agey healers.

Beautiful! Can't wait to read your book. Did your big brother enjoy going to the Met? If so, what was his favorite exhibit? And what's yours?

THank you! Yeah man, Tom loved the Met. I remember we went and saw an El Greco show together, also the Manet/Velasquez show. He was a man of few words, which is what you want from a companion in an art museum. You don't want to be with a person where you're always having to prove your aesthetic sensabilities by saying something insightful! Usually there's nothing insightful to say except, "wow" with a slow head shake. "My God..." more headshaking. He was that kind of guy. Didn't have to say it. We knew how each other felt.

Did you ever experience a thing where an ancient curse would cause all the statues and paintings to come to life at night, or did that kinda stuff only happen at the AMNH?

Everyone has this issue confused. It isn't the art that comes to life. It's the guards who turn back into works of art.

How many kids tried to sleep in the Marie Antoinette bed after From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler came out?

I don't know of one! But of course that is a wonderful book and I'm always happy to be asked about it.

How often do art heists occur and are any ever successful?

Speaking as a matter of public record here... There were heists at the Met in 79, 80, and 81. Or I don't know if heists is the right word... there were thefts. One of a Greek head by an unknown person who probably called in the tip themselves (it's a long story, maybe I'll tell it later.) One by a couple of no good teens who tried to sell an Egyptian ring at a jeweler and Lexington Avenue and were caught. One, an inside job by a custodial supervisor. But hey, I was born in 1983 and there hasn't been a single theft at the Met in my lifetime! There's a whole lot going on preventing it, up to and including all the fantastic men and women in dark blue suits blanketing the place. But yes, there are art heists that still happen all over the world, not infrequent.

Great job.. how's does one go from being a guard in a beautiful museum to getting a publisher interested in your book?

One writes and writes and writes and chews up pencils with anxiety until one has something that kind of sort of looks like 2/3 of a book draft. Then one uses it to find an agent, cold querying a couple of dozens until one bites. Then one works with said agent (the wonderful Farley Chase) for damn near a year to write an 80 page book proposal. Then one is very very very lucky to have a publisher like Simon & Schuster bid on it, providing the services of an editor, the wonderful Eamon Dolan, to continue shaping it. Then one writes it and boy it's hard.

What is something behind the scenes of the art museum/art world that would shock someone not familiar with it?

I think people would be shocked by just how extensive the museum is behind the scenes. The Met sits on 12 acres of Central Park, and it's every bit as big below ground as it is above. 2000 people work there. More than 500 guards. And down below it's practically a little village, with offices, conservation studios, wood shops, plexi glass shops, a printer, a working armory....

is that area ever open to the public? Sounds like it would be a fascinating place to tour.

No, sorry.

Hi Patrick, congratulations for your book! What were your three favorite artworks and why?

Thanks! You know, I don't really have the kind of mind that can rank my favorites the way I might short stops or point guards. I stand in front of a beautiful or affecting work... I have a response... that response is very real and profound but hard to put into words... and when at last I wander away from the work, what I have is a memory, a memory that is a pale thing compared to the experience itself... So I return; I return and return, and each time a particular work might feel unsurpassable. So ha, that's not an answer for you, but I'm sure that later in the AMA I'll list off some favorites. Ok here's one: Pieter Bruegel's great landscape The Harvesters (1565)

Hey, not sure if you’ll see this, but I have a question as someone who also works in the arts.

In the orchestra world we are reliant upon the largesse of big donors, much like in the museum world. Orchestra musicians love to complain that it seems like big donors would always rather give money to “stuff” over “people”. I.E. they see the benefit of giving money to build a building, or to preserve some artwork.

But they don’t always see the benefit of supporting the people who make these wonderful artworks possible. They think people who work in the arts, like you, or like me (a musician) can always be on the chopping block, and can deal with a salary cut, but they don’t balk at the price to preserve a piece of art or to build a new gallery at the museum.

Did you ever run into anything like that in the museum world? Did you ever feel less valued as a person than a piece of inanimate art? I’m curious if this is a “musician” thing, or if it’s something that everyone who works for an arts nonprofit experiences in common.

Yeah, I can see what you're saying. There are a lot a lot of layers between the big donors and the guards, so I can't say I had a great feel for what those people are thinking about. But you're right, of course, that they want their names on wings, they want to be seen as having helped acquire X object, but they aren't doing things like endowing free coffee for the guards in the break room or otherwise asserting themselves to get people higher salaries. Which the guards need. Any billionare reading this, find yourself a seat on the board and do what this trombonist says.

What are the security procedures when a work of art is being transported from one location to another?

Good question! And one I can't really answer, sorry. I was a sort of guard who worked only in the building and can't really comment on what went on in the loading dock, where the crates are being loaded onto trucks.

Did you have an appreciation for art before beginning your job there? How did your appreciation change/transform during your career?

Oh yeah, I always loved art, and I took a few courses in college, but I never felt like remotely an expert in it, and I still don't feel that way. The thing about the Met... it isn't really a museum of ART HISTORY; it's a museum about life and death and the cosmos and the mystery of creation and the vastness and great ago of our world and the diverse remarkable talents of our species... all of it. I was more interested in using art as a pathway to grapple with all of that stuff, to engage with all of that stuff, to have experiences via Greek gods, etc., etven if they were just of marble and bronze! So I loved art and I continue to love art, but I think the more time I spent as a guard, the more interested I was in learning FROM art rather than ABOUT it

What is your favorite heist movie?

The Thomas Crowne Affair is the one I'd be asked about, and it's a good one. Totally ridiculous of course, and not really shot at the Met. But yes I was sometimes asked if I carry an electrified cattle prod like the guards in that movie. (Not saying!)

What are your observations on the differences between how different generations/age groups experience the Met?

Any generalization you have about people breaks down quickly... I'd see a teenager blasting music through his ear buds, and I'd be ready for him to be prickly when I asked him to turn it down, and he'd be an absolute sweetheart and ask me really open questions as he tried to wrap his mind around the place. Alternatively some educated looking person would be totally small minded and dismissive when I had to say something to them because, I don't know, it was closing time or what have you. I'm not sure that I saw a real generational difference. The kids take a lot of pictures, but so do the old people now. Everybody does.

I interned in the Education Department at the Met while I was in high school! To this day, it was the best job I've ever had. I always tell people working there was like working in Heaven. When I worked there, the museum was closed to the public on Mondays, but the employees were free to go up to the galleries. Having the entire museum to myself was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Did you ever get to do this? What was it like for you? Any particular areas that you gravitated to? European paintings, modern art, and the Egyptian sections were my favorites.

Can't wait to read your book!

Yeah, it was always funny on a Monday, because you have (a) curators and executive types leading around VIPs, and (b) guards and custodians and shop clerks and everyone else leading around their THRILLED friends and moms and dads. That was always a hoot. As a guard I got to be alone with art a lot, particularly in the mornings, but it was nice to be able to share it, you know?

Do I too have to form this as a question in order to not be banned? I guess we'll see? But anyhow, thank you so much all! These two+ hours flew right by. These were fascinating questions, and I hope you'll check out the book, ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD, which drops today, for more. For instance, I feel I didn't do enough talking about my extraordinary colleagues! Check out the book and you'll learn about five hundreds characters in dark blue suits who haunt the place. It's been real. Thanks. See you in an art gallery one day.

I was moved to tears the first time I saw The Starry Night in person. Do you have any memories of museum visitors deeply impacted by the art there?

Yes. I once was posted nearby a woman who was looking up a huge American landscape called The Heart of the Andes. And she looked vaguely in my direction for a second but then she just let out a slow, earnest soliloquy with her eyes fixed on the painting, just a word at a time saying how beautiful it was, how relaxing, how inspiring, not in sophisticated language but with diamond-hard sincerity. I loved people like that. She had come alone to the museum, and it was often those people who came along and felt they HAD to say something to SOMEBODY who talked to me, as a guard.

Whenever I notice a guard watching me in a museum I immediately feel self-conscious about whether I appear suspicious to them, which probably causes me to act twice as shady as I had been initially.

Can you reliably tell when someone is on the brink of actually doing something bad (e.g., touching the art)? How do you decide when to intervene and what to let go?

Ha, you sort of can. You can tell by the way that someone is walking that they are crossing the gallery IN ORDER TO go touch that statue. Not always, but often, and you'll try to catch them before the event by saying "Not so close, please!" I learned this trick... You should never say "Not too close," because it invites people to argue about whether they're too close. If you on the other hand say "Not SO close" how are they going to argue with that? A lot of people surprise you too, but there is a spidey sense you sometimes get...

Working in a museum such as that, with so many wonderful pieces and the history surrounding it, I wonder what your viewpoint is on the current movement to deaccession pieces to originating cultures and countries?

Also were you involved in helping with the Golden Sarcophagus incident or not really?

These questions are important and they're complicated. They're hard. Museums need to like at contested objects on a case by case basis and figure out what's right, what's fair, what will make things better rather than worse, what will make the world richer than than more impoverished. There are people who would prefer all art to go back to its country of origin; do we want to live in that world? That would be a crying shame, I think, to have to get on a hundred different planes to experience world culture. But also, guards don't want to feel like prison guards, holding objects IN that have a compelling case for release, that were looted violently, for instance, in living memory. It's hard. We have to be wise about these things, and compassionate, and judicious.

Did you get to choose or put in for the rooms you wanted to work in? Ur could you choose the Vermeer gallery or oceanic?

Not really, no. You walk into the dispatch office in the morning and they pinball you away to Greece or Rome or Mesopotamia or what have you. OCCASSIONALLY you could put in some special request.

What was the switch from an office job to this more straightforward and useful job like? I have an office job and I like to write in my free time. I'm thinking of making a similar career switch.

What were the things that took getting used to? Or things that surprised you the most?

For me it was wonderful. I mean, I worked at The New Yorker, so superficially you might think that's conducive to turning someone into a writer. But no, not really, not for me, because my thoughts had to be rather narrow and rather persnickety as I was writing emails or what have you... Doing a straighforward job, my thoughts could be wider, free, more earnest and honest and reflective of how I actually felt about things. I came as a huge relief immediately. I didn't have to get used to it.

Did you ever catch thosekids who were sleeping in the Met?

They're middle aged now and I would sneak them donuts now and again.

Did you ever have any worries of a potential smash-and-grab or burglary similar to the 1990 Gardner Museum robbery in Boston?

Looking forward to reading your book tomorrow!

For sure. The Gardner Heist was of course discussed during training, and the Met has a bunch of different safeguards and procedures looking out for such a thing... An interesting thing about the Gardner heist, there's a complete amnesty for the crooks as by this point all they want is the art back safely. So if any of you did it, fess up! There will be no legal consequences!

Any supernatural or spooky stories? Thanks and I wish you the very best.

Thanks! Guards like to say that the third floor of the American wing is haunted. That's an area that guards call "the old Wing" because it's the old 1920s core, and it matched up sort of awkwardly with all the shinier galleries built around it. Up on the third floor you have an old 17th century Mass meeting house much like the one the Salem "witches" were tried and condemened in. And it's remarkable being in spaces like that because you realize how small they were, how intimate. The farmer sitting in the last row could have looked the women they were condemning in the eyes. I don't see a witch though.

How did your body and your social life adjust to working the night shift?

I never worked the night shift! I did however work this schedule: 12 hrs Fri, 12 hrs Sat, 8 hrs Sun, 8 hrs Tuesday. So that did a number not only on my aching legs, but also on my social life, as I was twenty five when I got the job. Weekends down the drain. But you have to make choices in life, right? And I don't regret mine.

I’ve only visited the Met once in 2006 and I forgot so many things (because there was so much to see!) but my favorite room was the Frank Lloyd Wright room. It seemed the most peaceful place in the museum and I wished I could have just sat in one of the chairs and watched people.

What was your favorite part of the museum?

To restrict myself to the period rooms... The Chinese Scholars' garden, called the Astor Court. So beautiful, so peaceful, and there's a glass ceiling meaning the light changes over the course of a long day... I was once posted there during a snowstorm.

What’s your writing background, and how difficult was it get interest in a publishing deal?

I've always written but until today I've never published anything of consequence. I'm not very good at grinding out assignments, I'm not fast, I'm not facile, so I've always doubted I could be a freelance writer cranking out internet copy, that sort of thing. So what ended up happening is I took the long way around... I thought and thought and scribbled and scribbled until I'd discovered a kind of a style and a story I wanted to tell. And then I was very lucky to find an agent after cold querying a couple of dozen who liked what I had cooking. Then it was a long process of refining and expanding into a book proposal. Then it was a brutal challenge writing a manuscript in 18 months, but hey, it's hard, everything's hard, raising kids is hard, building anything is hard, it's all hard. You do your best.

Hello!

Any rivalry, friendly or otherwise, with the natural history museum across Central Park?

SCREW THOSE GUYS! Ha, no not at all. We're asked for the dinosaurs as guards pretty frequently, usually by parents of small children on a first visit to the big city who are puzzled to find that this museum is only filled with... art? I wonder if they ever get asked for the Rembrandts over there.

Standing upright for 12 hour shifts sounds physically demanding. Did it take a toll on your lower back?

It's hard in different ways for different people... For me it wasn't so much my back (or my feet) as my legs. They would just feel totally depleted and would begin to plead with my head like, "Come on, man, sit down! Sit down!" Sometimes I would drop to my haunches and a wave of physical euphoria would spread through my body. I can't complain though; I was young. I held the job from age 25 to 35. It's much harder for some of the older guards.

What was accurate and not so accurate about the Met heist depicted in Ocean's 8?

Ha, the only thing I remember with great clarity... There's a scene where someone asks a guard for directions... they're in the American Wing... and I sat forward in my seat to see if the guard would answer accurately! He didn't at all; he pointed in a nonsense direction and said something like, "Down the hall!" Unfortunately I'd say nothing about that movie was at all realistic, and also I wish it was MORE unrealistic, more ridiculous, silly, big.

Who was your favorite celebrity to meet?

Who was your least favorite?

Most favorite was Michael Stipe, simply because I did not notice him. I just heard a voice saying, "Hey, can you direct us to Madame X?" And I turned around and there was Michael Stipe's face 2 feet from mine. Least favorite? Not sure I have one, so I'll also say that Dr. Ruth was really really nice. She was flanked by two gorgeous young men and she sort of pushed me affectionately as she said about the Islamic Wing: "This is so beautiful! This is so beautifuL!"

I have a Bougereau now at my gig at the Portland Art Museum, how's my Breton brother and sister doing?

Do you have a particular piece you spend a little more time with? Mine was that one and Joan of Arc.

I can't pay a dime anymore without giving a zip code, why did that change?

I'll throw another favorite at you: the Simonetti carpet, from the Mamluks, c. 1500. That things is just an infinity... You can follow its tens of thousands of threads and just never exhaust its beauty... As for the changed admission policy, the reason is: money! Why else? It's a shame but I can't say I know any more than an average person about it.

What was the most underwhelming piece of art you saw on display during your time there?

Ha, I could never be an art critic because I really only have two modes. First mode: i see something that makes me feel something and I explore that. Second mode: I see something that makes me feel nothing and I'm not made about it, I just want to move on. In the latter category, there are contemporary art pieces, but there are also great supposed masterpieces by Corot or what have you! I don't have any strong desire to prove that I'm RIGHT about my lack of response. I just know that, for better or worse, I try to feel something about them and I can't... my pulse doesn't change... I'm not interested in writing about that. I move on to the next thing.

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Yes it's something to keep an eye on. Also, people who have had a few too many on the roof garden. Not COMMON (both things), but something that does happen.

What was the process of applying and interviewing for the job like?

They used to put an ad in the New York Times (I think it's all digital now.) I saw the ad, went to an open house in the big auditorium in the Egyptian wing. When they told the attendees the hours -- 12 hours fri, 12 hours sat, 8 hours sun, 8 hours an additional weekday -- half the room walked out. But I stayed, I interviewed (they don't need to see security experience; they just want good, responsible people), and I got the job.

Are you still working at the Met now? If not, what're you up to (besides writing and promoing, of course!)?

No, I left in 2019. As for now, yes, I'm purely banging a drum saying "look at me! look at me!" which isn't a very healthy way to live, so I'll be happy to move on from this stage. As for what comes next? No idea really. We'll see how the book does and what doors it does or doesn't open.

Have you ever over-analyzed a piece of art when looking at it? (I.e. just overthought its meaning)

Oh of course. One of the many wonderful things about being a guard is you can approach a work of art in all different ways, in all different moods. So sometimes you're in the mood to just hang back and observe, forming no thoughts or dumb thoughts like "that sheerrr is pretty." And sometimes you're in the mood to take a step forward and try to assert yourself, try to wrestle with the work of art. And it's totally worth it to take some big swings and go out on a limb and maybe overanalyze or maybe wildly analyze. Why not? No one's looking over your shoulder. Everyone should be coloring outside the lines at an art museum. Why not?

What would you love to change about the art world, from your unique perspective?

I know next to nothing about the art world in the sense of what hip and cutting edge people are up to. I wish them well though! What I can say about the museum world... I think if you take a step back and ask yourself "What is the Met?" the answer will be something like "a place where we gather beautiful things and try to suss out their meaning." And there is no reason in the world that only people with art history degrees from Princeton or Yale should be helming that enterprise. There is no specific training that makes a person an expert in beauty or meaning. It takes all sorts of brains to work on the project, all sorts of areas of the heart as well as the head. So I wish that museums would chill a little bit with their academic slant, with their scholarly slant. That stuff is valuable but there is more out there and more types of people who should be involved.

Who is your favourite Impressionist and why is it Monet? Ha ha

It is Degas! Sorry, I love Monet, too, even though I was at first a little skeptical of him. His pictures are so PRETTY that at first I was little biased against him, thinking maybe that's all they are. But nope. I looked at some of those paintings a long long time and they are marvels. Impossible to exhaust. Degas though... he's a towering master in my view.

What's the silliest thing a patron has asked you?

I once had a young man try to climb a Venus statue to sit in her lap... I stopped him... And he looked at her with her missing head and limbs... and he looked all around at other ancient statues... and he said, "So all this broken stuff, it broke in here?"

Oh, you did your own narration for the audiobook. What went into that, both the decision and the actual process?

My mom is a Chicago theater actor, so I have a lot of respect for performance and knew that I'd take it seriously, so I really wanted to try. And I guess I passed the audition because I'd put some videos on social media where people complimented my voice. Then in the actual studio I got great advice from the director. She said: pretend there's an old man sitting in a chair right there, and you're telling the story just to him. You don't have to be BIG or PERFORMATIVE, just communicate, communicate.

Did you have any favorite ways to pass the time besides people/art watching? Any favorite games or jokes?

"When you get bored of the people, look at the art. When you get bored of the art, watch the people." An old timer guard gave me that advice, and it's true, that's the main way that you're toggling... But I'm embarassed to admit this... I very occasionally played a game I called "coin flip baseball" where I could play a ballgame in my head depending on if... it's complicated. Only on very quiet days! I would also of course try to write things in my head. One can get very gradually better at that.

Your book sounds amazing. I have two questions- 1. What's your favorite art movement /period? 2. Which works of art consistently moved people the most?

I don't know if it's my favorite or not, but I loved the really OLD old masters, the paintings from the 14th century with hammered gold leaf on cracking wooden panels. They're so sad, but so beautiful, and they're focused overwhelmingly on the Passion, which is just an old word that means suffering, and the emotion is so close to the surface. They don't want you to be thinking about "art movements" or "periods" they want you to be thinking about life and death and loss and the poignancy of the human drama. And as a guard I fortunately had enough time to just kind of stand back and do that, to bear witness to them.

Congratulations! I'm very curious to read your book !

We all know people that don't really connect with art. Did you came across with any colleagues that were like "I don't get it , why we need to guard this?"

Oh of course. When you have more than 500 guards they're going to think in all kinds of ways about the art. Many are artists themselves. Many are intensely interested. Many have their own ideosyncratic favorites and aversions. And many don't care about art in particular. It's a wonderful thing, actually; the guards are a kind of living New York City inside of this great museum. They're everybody.

Hi Patrick, what were some of your go-to art pieces or collections when you wanted to disconnect or distract yourself from your current thoughts?

Yes, distracting yourself from your current thoughts is a noble goal, and I think that just about any piece or collection can serve that purpose. I always give the advice... first thing you should do at a museum is wander in, stay quiet, say nothing to nobody (not even a guard), and try to feel pleasantly insignificant, wander through centuries and continents marvelling at how narrow and measly and beside-the-point your normal prosaic trickle of thoughts is. And how mean and small the hotbutton discussions on twitter are. What have you. Get lost inside a very very big and very full world. From there, you can put the art and the museum to a variety of different uses, but I think that's always the first step. That's the palette cleans.

Hi there! Do you have any personal favorite works in the Met that you became familiar with in your time there?

So many... I'll say a power figure from Congo, a nkisi it's called, that by the time it was created was too powerful to be held by human hands. It had to manipulated by sticks attached to the figure's wrists by raffia cords. On the present object, you can still see the cords, you can see it's still slick with anointing oils and rooster blood, and more than that, you can feel the power the carver is transmitting via the extraordinary geometry he found, a massive head, a shield-like face, but also an intimate air of a young man (a god, really) softly shutting his eyes. It's an amazing thing to be in the presence of.

What was the shittiest guest situation you've had to deal with?

Closing time can be tricky as people want to sneak in their last 25 photographs. I once had a guy raise his hand and say, "Five minutes please." He was a rich guy, or an important guy, and he thought it was hilarious that I, a security guard, was trying to chase him out. When at last we (a bunch of us) did pry this barnacle off the hull, so to speak, he turned to his young son and said: "Small people, small power; it's life."

What was the process like for writing the book? The decision to write, finding a publisher, etc. What a day for you! Congrats.

Maybe seven or eight years in I thought I might want to try writing a "Guard's Guide to the Met," sort of an unusual guide book with on-the-ground anecdotes, etc. But I tried writing that and it had no center; it was just bizarre. And I realized that the thing that people infrequently write about is the SUBJECTIVE experience of looking at and communing with art. And I realized that, for me to write about that, people would have to know who I am. So I saw that the book should be a story, should be a memoir, one about me of course, but one that also uses the figure of the guard as a bit of a stand-in for any earnest individual who might wander into a great museum and take their time there.

If you were to pull of a heist yourself, what would you steal and why?

You know -- this is a dodge -- but I do not need to own anything that's in the Met. I'm sitting in my little junky apartment right now, and it does not need a Pieter Bruegel hanging on the wall. I do not need to deprive the world public of anything so I can have it my home. Because guess what? I can go to the Met. Public collections are 100000x richer than anybody's private collection. Rich people are working with our table scraps. And we should all be proud of that.

What are some great museums for native history?

The Met recently (a couple years ago) got a wonderful gift of Native American Art. The Smithsonian museum by the battery in Manhattan is sensational... name escaping me right now, but native American art. I'm sure there are many others.

Gretchen Rubin tries to visit the Met daily. Are there many people that are so committed to Met visits? Congratulations and best wishes for your writing career!

There are a few, yes. There's a regular I write about in my book who visits every weekend without fail and gives Christmas cards to all the guards.

What's your favorite face-palm/are you serious right now moment?

I saw a guy thwap a crucifixion painting three times with his rolled up museum map... One for each nail: hand, hand, feet. He was thoughtlessly making some sort of a point to his companion.

did you ever play the role of a red teamer/pen tester, trying to realistically simulate a heist or otherwise breach security?

Afraid not, sounds fun.

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Regulars for sure... Multiple people that visit just about every week, including a young man who used to walk around with subway service advisories and give the guards advice depending on what train were taking home. Famous people... Saw a bunch. I once saw Tom Cruise getting a tour in a special exhibition of Egyptian art and he looked soooooo Tom Cruisey, he was listening with the curator with such intensity I was surprised she didn't explode.

So is night at the museum one of your favorite movies?... I'm sure you've never been asked.

I think I'm a little too old to really love this movie. It's alright. At the Met though (second time I'm making this joke) it's the guards who turn into works of art.

A couple questions.

1. What's something about the publishing process that most people are unaware of?

2. Has working in the Met as a security guard made you view other security jobs or museums differently? If so, how?

3. What are your thoughts on the Friends episode about the Met?

There's a Friends episode in the Met? I don't know it. I want to shout out the Sesame Street special "Don't Eat the Pictures" as it has an all-time great throwaway line. "No, Cookie Monster, don't eat that! That's a Cezanne!" Cookie Monster: "Say whaaaaaaa?"

Do I view security guards differently? For sure. You have no idea what sort of lives anyone's lived and the consitution of their character. To assume the president of the Louvre is a more impressive person than the person checking your coat is just ridiculous. The latter might be twice as impressive in all the areas that really count, in all the areas that wise people like jesus or the Buddha or what have you, the really really wise ones, say count.

Publishing process... How slow it moves. I finished the book including editing more than a year ago! And here we are today.

What difficulties a guard generally face while working in a museum?

Sore legs, long hours, people trying to touch things, occasional people asking like jackasses... horseplay, rudeness, inconsiderateness, etc. The pay could be better too. Don't get me wrong I loved the job but of course some guards don't! When there are over five hundred guards they relate to the job (and the art) in all kinds of different ways.

What a moment!

What work grew on you the most?

Interesting question... I'll stick with an answer I gave above and say Monet's paintings precisely because I was being slightly snobby about them at first, was thinking "eh this is calendar type art that everyone likes; let me go hunt for spikier and stranger stuff." But you shouldn't have preconceptions like that when you look at art, and fortunately I had enough time to drop my defenses and see the pictures for what they are. And they're rather good

Curious how much of your story is 'museum' and how much is your brother, you, and family..??

85% or more is the museum, though I hope that the family/brother story sort of permeates the book, as it establishes who I am and why I'm in the museum in the first place.

Looking forward to reading your book.

Have you been inspired to paint, sculpt, etc... by your time there?

Thanks! Oh I wish I knew how. I might take lessons one day. That's one thing I'd love to know much much more about -- how art is made. Museums as a whole should do more to elucidate it, as people really don't know, and they've very interested in process because... Whether or not a person cares about Roman history of Christian iconography or what have you, they know what is to make something really WELL, with more care and skill and diligence than one could have any right to expect. That's art, in my view: something that's better or more beautiful than it has any right to be. And the craft element, it's an entry point for people. It's very relatable, as we've all attempted similar things, even if it was just a meal we made for a loved one, or some such.

Hi! During your decade at the Met, did you notice any major changes in visitor behavior? If any, what were they? And what was your most curious/favorite interaction with a museum visitor?

Thanks!

Not really. The Met is a place where there are 50 plus centuries of art, so it makes you kind of skeptical that people change all that much in the span of ten years, haha. But I guess when I started it wasn't yet the smart phone era, so there were fewer pictures being taken. The Met used to even restrict pictures in special exhibitions, but now they've unconditionally surrendered to them. That's fine though. I'm not a grump about such things, even though I do think it's the wrong approach, that you should focus on experience in the moment, not some insubstantial copy you're taking home.

How spooky is it there at late night?

Never been! It's a different ballgame working the Early Watch or the Late Watch... I'd have had to have transfered.

Actually I was once in the museum at 3am because they kept it open that late the last night of the blockbuster Alexander McQueen show. But it wasn't spooky. It was a party.

What’s the best time/day to visit the Met with the lease crowd?

Best pizza spot in short walking distance from the Met?

Did you ever work the night shift? How’s that any different from the day shift?

Best time/day... mornings (any day) or late evenings (on Fri or Sat)... quietest.

Pizza... There's only one and it's not great. On Lex and 84th. The Upper East Side is not where you want to be for cheap food of any description.

Night shift... No I never did. It's a seperate thing; I'd have had to transfer to the Early Watch or the Late Watch.

What is your favorite item at the met? It is one of my favorite museums. Congratulations on the book.

Thank you! There are so many so I'll answer this question differently each time. I'll say the 800 year old Iranian mihrab in the Islamic wing. An observant Muslim would return (five times a day) to such a thing to re-tether their thoughts to very basic but also very myserious and astounding things about reality, about creation, about (in their mind) God. And though I'm not an observant Muslim, or a religious person at all, I can understand the usefulness of that! You look into this gorgeous prayer niche and it's a sort of portal inviting you to think about bigness, about spleandor, about the constitution of the cosmos and the fulness of the world.

Hi Patrick! If you could own one legendary work by a famous master, what would it be, and by which artist?

I really truly don't need to deprive the world of a masterpiece to put it in my junky apartment in Brooklyn here. I can always go to the Met. So I think what I'd like to own... I'd like one, just one, of the best Greek coins from classical Athens, one with a real real nice and bumpy design that I could run my finger over as I carry it around in my pocket. That would be cool. I would just have to be careful not to use it in a vending machine.

How many kids have you caught living there?

Oh it's basically an orphanage. Ever seen Annie? At night, similar vibe.

Will your book be translated to French? When?

I hope so! We don't have a French contract yet but we have a number of foreign contracts and I hope this one's coming!

Wait, you got 5.5 months off each year?!

huh? No.