hen Patrick Bringley’s beloved older brother fell ill with cancer, he found he no longer had much appetite for his ritzy job in the events department of the New Yorker. Life then was about hospital rooms and love and “all the very basic things” in this world. But what to do instead? In 2008, Tom died, and Patrick knew he needed the kind of work that would not require him to constantly “muscle his way forward”. Acting on a whim, he applied for a position as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and by the autumn there he was, standing next to Raphael’s Madonna and Child Enthroned With Saints
