The Morgan Library & Museum

The Morgan Library & Museum Once library of financier Pierpont Morgan—now a museum, research library, music venue, architectural landmark, and historic site.
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The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. Today it is a museum, independent research library, music venue, architectural landmark, and historic site. A century after its founding, the Morgan maintains a unique position in the cultural life of New York City and is considered one of its greatest treasures.

Now on view! “The Book of Marvels: Imagining the Medieval World.”From the tales of famous travelers like Marco Polo and ...
01/24/2025

Now on view! “The Book of Marvels: Imagining the Medieval World.”

From the tales of famous travelers like Marco Polo and Alexander the Great to the ancient encyclopedias of Pliny and Isidore, medieval conceptions of the world were often based more on authoritative tradition than direct observation. This exhibition, on view through May 25, presents one of the most fascinating examples of a medieval guide to the globe, known as the Book of the Marvels of the World. Written in France by an unknown author, this fifteenth-century illustrated text vividly depicts the remarkable inhabitants, customs, and natural phenomena of various regions, both near and far. Reuniting two of the four surviving copies, “The Book of Marvels: Imagining the Medieval World” brings to life medieval conceptions—and misconceptions—of a global world.

Additional objects in the exhibition demonstrate how foreign cultures were imagined in the Middle Ages, and what the assumptions of medieval Europeans tell us about their own implicit biases and beliefs. Highlights include rare illustrated manuscripts of Marco Polo and John Mandeville; a richly ornamented Ottoman Book of Wonders, made for a sultan’s daughter; and a spectacular medieval map of the Holy Land, based on pilgrimage accounts.

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This exhibition is organized by Joshua O'Driscoll, Associate Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.

"The Book of Marvels: Imagining the Medieval World" is made possible with support from the New York Medieval Society, an anonymous donor, the Lucy Ricciardi Family Exhibition Fund, Martha J. Fleischman, the David L. Klein Jr. Foundation, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
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Image: Master of the Geneva Boccaccio, Traponee (Sri Lanka), France, Probably Angers, ca. 1460-65, in the Book of the Marvels of the World, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS 124, fol. 32r (detail).

Did you know that the Morgan has an extensive archive of correspondence from the artist Edouard Manet? Sal Robinson, a c...
01/23/2025

Did you know that the Morgan has an extensive archive of correspondence from the artist Edouard Manet? Sal Robinson, a curator in our Literary and Historical Manuscripts Department, describes her research journey through this incredible archive in a recent blog post. An excerpt is below:

“In 1974, the Morgan purchased a large collection of materials related to the painter Édouard Manet from the American scholar Mina Kirstein Curtiss. Curtiss had acquired them in Paris in the 1950s from Lucienne Tabarant, the daughter of the art historian and journalist Adolphe Tabarant, who published an early catalogue raisonné of Manet’s work, Manet: Histoire catalographique (1931), as well as other important texts on Manet and on the Impressionists. According to the Manet scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau, this collection (known since its acquisition as the Tabarant Collection or the Tabarant Archive) was originally part of a larger group of papers inherited by Manet’s widow Suzanne and her son Léon Leenhoff. At some point, Leenhoff seems to have divided the papers between Tabarant and Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, another art historian. Moreau-Nélaton’s section of the materials went to the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1927. But the Tabarant Archive came to the United States instead.”

Read more on our blog! https://www.themorgan.org/blog/manet-morgan-processing-project

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Édouard Manet, Carnet de notes. (1860–1862) Nombreuses adresses, notamment de modèles. Et quelques croquis. The Morgan Library & Museum, MA 3950, Notebook 1. Purchased as the gift of Mrs. Charles Engelhard and children in memory of Mr. Charles Engelhard, 1974.

01/22/2025

The Making of an Icon

When Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis at the age of forty, in 1924, few could have predicted the influence his relatively small body of work would have on every realm of thought and creative endeavor over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st. This exhibition presents, for the first time in the United States, the Bodleian Library’s extraordinary holdings of literary manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and photographs related to Kafka, including the original manuscript of his novella The Metamorphosis.

In addition to presenting unique literary and biographical material, the exhibition examines Kafka’s afterlife, from the complex journeys of his manuscripts, to the posthumous creation of a literary icon whose very name has become an adjective, to his immense influence on the worlds of literature, theater, dance, film, and the visual arts.

“Franz Kafka” is open to the public now through April 13, 2025.

Video By SandenWolff.

In 1919, Belle Greene purchased this manuscript commentary on the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) at auction from the co...
01/21/2025

In 1919, Belle Greene purchased this manuscript commentary on the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) at auction from the collection of Henry Yates Thompson. In her notes for the sale, she marked this manuscript (and one other) as “most important.” She bid successfully and yet again acquired a Yates Thompson manuscript at a steep bargain. The manuscript was written and illuminated by an artist/scribe named Maius and is the earliest complete copy of the celebrated Beatus manuscripts of medieval Spain. It is a prime example of Greene’s acquisitions of medieval manuscripts originating outside of the traditional Western European cultural centers of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany.
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St. Beatus of Liébana (d. 798)
Commentary on the Apocalypse, in Latin
San Salvador de Tábara, Spain, ca. 945
The Morgan Library & Museum; MS M.644, vol. 1

This   Day, we’re reflecting on the history of the civil rights movement through this letter from Frederick Douglass– on...
01/20/2025

This Day, we’re reflecting on the history of the civil rights movement through this letter from Frederick Douglass– on view in “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy.” This letter was one of Greene’s late acquisitions.

Its content hearkens back to the civil rights work of Greene’s father, Richard T. Greener, who was a contemporary of Douglass’s. “I would not throw cold water on the laudable ambition of my race to obtain some recognition in the Government,” Douglass writes. “They ought to have it and will get it. All that they have a right to ask of General Garfield is, that they shall not be discriminated against on account of race or color in his selection of the men to fill the offices under him.”
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Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)
Autograph letter to J. D. Husbands, January 17, 1881
The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased from P. Alloway, November 1947; MA 1221

A Literary Treasure Less than four years into her role, Belle da Costa Greene wrote to J.P. Morgan to inform him that sh...
01/19/2025

A Literary Treasure

Less than four years into her role, Belle da Costa Greene wrote to J.P. Morgan to inform him that she “bought the only existing manuscript of the Raven by Poe.” She continued, “I think it one of the most important items in American literature and felt that this belonged with your other Poe manuscripts. It was offered by Hellman for $2500—I bought it at $1500.”

The deluxe binding that formerly housed the manuscript bears Greene’s pencil notes on the inside cover, where she later indicated that another manuscript of “The Raven” had been discovered.
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Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Autograph letter to John Augustus Shea, containing the earliest surviving fragment of “The Raven,” February 3, 1845. The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1909; MA 621

Anyone looking to find a prayer for protection from stomachaches?This late 19th century manuscript, housed within the Me...
01/18/2025

Anyone looking to find a prayer for protection from stomachaches?

This late 19th century manuscript, housed within the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Department, contains not only a prayer to protect against stomachaches, but also protective prayers against the evil eye as well as spirits that cause a host of different illnesses.

Helina Gebremedhen, a PhD candidate at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, recently visited the Reading Room to view five different Ethiopian prayer scrolls, including the one pictured above. Her research focuses on Ethiopian talismanic scrolls, aiming “to explore this popular genre of material artefacts whose vivid images and texts are at the intersection of Orthodox Christian and Muslim talismanic traditions, widespread in the Red Sea region and beyond.” Over the course of a few visits, Helina worked on translating the five scrolls that she viewed in the Reading Room.

Learn more about how to request an appointment in the Reading Room at the link in the bio!


Ethiopian prayer scroll (Ethiopia, late 19th century): MS M.1136.

Photography often seems solitary: one camera, one viewfinder. These photographs, however, are the result of collaborativ...
01/17/2025

Photography often seems solitary: one camera, one viewfinder. These photographs, however, are the result of collaborative production. On view in "A Social Medium: Collaboration in Photography" through February, these photographs and more from the Morgan’s collection encourage us to reconsider the common assumption that photographs reflect a single moment captured by an individual.

Photographers have taken many approaches to working cooperatively, such as forming collectives, partnering with illustrators, documenting others’ performance-based art, or collaging photographic fragments to create new images. Ultimately, collaboration is a foundational component of nearly all photography: the labor of multiple people is almost always required to capture, print, and circulate camera images. By decentering individual authorship and instead considering photography as a social medium, these artists fundamentally expand our understanding of the diverse processes by which photographs can be made.

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PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret Hoening French), Untitled (Fire Island), ca. 1939. Gelatin silver print. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Michael Koch and Andrew Kohler; 2023.96.

One of the treasures Belle Greene and Bernard Berenson saw in Munich was an album of Persian and Mughal paintings and ca...
01/16/2025

One of the treasures Belle Greene and Bernard Berenson saw in Munich was an album of Persian and Mughal paintings and calligraphy from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The collection belonged to Charles Hercules Read, keeper of British and medieval antiquities at the British Museum. In 1911 Greene wrote to Read, a friend and colleague, to ask if the album was for sale, explaining her rationale for the acquisition. She noted that, despite Morgan’s minimal interest in Persian and Mughal art, “in a collection of manuscripts and drawings such as he has, it is very necessary for him to have a representation of this most important school.” Greene’s interest in collecting Islamic art, among peer institutions, was ahead of its time.
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1. A seated courtier with his pet falcon, with surrounding text in Persian
Herāt, Afghanistan, ca. 1600. The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1911; MS M.386, fol. 1r
2. A youth flexing an exercise bow, with surrounding text in Persian
Herāt, Afghanistan, ca. 1600. The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1911; MS M.386, fol. 10r

It might be a surprise that this colorful work was included in an edition of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Stoker”! Eli...
01/15/2025

It might be a surprise that this colorful work was included in an edition of Franz Kafka’s short story “The Stoker”! Elisabeth Siefer created this for an edition published in Mexico City in 1985.

In 1913, Kafka published the first chapter of his novel about America as a stand-alone short story, “The Stoker.” It begins with the arrival of teenage Karl Rossmann in New York Harbor. His America is ultramodern—a place of novel machinery, mass media, and workers’ strikes. This new world makes Rossmann intensely anxious. The silent threat is visible on this page, with the Statue of Liberty holding a sword rather than a torch.
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Der Heizer (The Stoker)
Illustrated by Elisabeth Siefer
Mexico City, 1985
Private Collection, Photography by Carmen González Fraile, courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum

Now on view through May 4th, the historic library rotation features items selected by curators Philip Palmer and Erica C...
01/14/2025

Now on view through May 4th, the historic library rotation features items selected by curators Philip Palmer and Erica Ciallela that complement our current exhibition "Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy." The selection showcases Greene’s acquisitions and demonstrates her intensive research into the collection and wide-ranging intellectual interests. Additional objects relate to literary and theatrical works that address themes reflective of her life, including racial passing. A special highlight is the last known photograph of Greene, taken in the West Room in 1950 and on loan from I Tatti.
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Theodore C. Marceau (1859–1922), Series of portraits of Belle da Costa Greene, May 1911. Gelatin silver prints. Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies; Bernard and Mary Berenson Papers, Personal Photographs: Box 1 Friends (Large Format)

Dear Museum Lover,You are cordially invited to attend our brand new Morgan After Hours event on Thursday, February 13, f...
01/13/2025

Dear Museum Lover,

You are cordially invited to attend our brand new Morgan After Hours event on Thursday, February 13, from 6PM to 9PM.

Bring a friend or loved one, or treat yourself to an evening of live music from the jazz age, letter-writing workshops to woo your special someone, drinks and sweets treats, and meet your (literary) match in all of the Morgan’s gilded age glamour. Explore the exhibitions "Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy," "Franz Kafka," and "The Book of Marvels: Imagining the Medieval World" after hours.

Morgan After Hours is open to all attendees ages 21 and up. We can’t wait to see you!

Love,
The Morgan

Purchase tickets: https://www.themorgan.org/programs/morgan-after-hours
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Photography by Filip Wolak

Curious to learn more about how our conservators study books and bindings? Read about the process of analyzing the Morga...
01/12/2025

Curious to learn more about how our conservators study books and bindings? Read about the process of analyzing the Morgan’s Codex Lippomano, the earliest-known example of a plaquette binding from the Italian Renaissance in a blog post by Yungjin Shin, our former Pine Tree Foundation Fellow in Book Conservation. A plaquette binding is decorated in the center of its cover with a relief impression, often a profile of a Classical figure or scene. In the Codex Lippomano, the central oval leather piece is stamped and inlaid in the wooden board, assumed to be a profile of Antinous, the lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian.

In her post, Shin analyzes each layer of material in the book and discusses how she created a model of the binding, showing how conservators at the Morgan approach research into new acquisitions.

Check out this blog on our website. https://www.themorgan.org/blog/hidden-layers-codex-lippomano-study-earliest-plaquette-binding

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1. First page of PML 199044.
2. The model (bottom) before covering with leather and the Codex Lippomano (top).
3. Diagram showing all layers of PML 199044.
4. Left: Alum-tawed thongs lacing through the wooden boards. Center: (left) Decorative endband, called Italian Renaissance endband; (right) Tarnished silver foil wrapping around the silk core. Right: Beveled edge wooden boards.

You know that feeling when you get home and find that your cat is up to no good? Every time Old Dame Trot comes home in ...
01/11/2025

You know that feeling when you get home and find that your cat is up to no good? Every time Old Dame Trot comes home in this 1830s children’s book, she finds the cat up to all sorts of outlandish activities, from teaching mice to dance to fencing with the dog. Ultimately, the cat kills a rat and curtsies when Dame Trot compliments their dressmaking skills.

The production of books for children's “edutainment” exploded in the early 1800s, mixing whimsical stories with moral instruction. The lessons embedded in this series, however, are not immediately apparent. This 1830 edition, published by Darton, capitalized on the success of "The Comic Adventures of Old Mother Hubbard and Her Dog,” first published by a rival printer in 1805. This manuscript is on view in the Morgan’s East Room through January 12.

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The Adventures of Old Dame Trot and Her Comical Cat, London: William Darton and Son, ca. 1830. Gift of Elisabeth Ball, 1965; PML 85080

A visionary Black woman who walked confidently in an early twentieth-century man’s world of wealth and privilege: that’s...
01/10/2025

A visionary Black woman who walked confidently in an early twentieth-century man’s world of wealth and privilege: that’s the incredible story of the first director of the Morgan Library.

When J. P. Morgan’s personal library opened as a public institution in 1924, the choice for its first director was an obvious one: Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950). Not only had she organized and catalogued the collection, she had significantly expanded its holdings and displayed its treasures in curated exhibitions. While she was well known for her librarianship in her lifetime, few people also knew that she had been born to a prominent Black family, and by her early twenties was passing as white in New York City.

Published to coincide with the centennial of her appointment as director and a related exhibition, “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy” presents a thematic collection of essays with new research on her family, education, portraits, professional networks, and her own art collection, while also engaging with larger themes such as race in America, gender and culture, and the history of Black librarianship. The book offers a full picture of Greene on her own terms and in her own words—revealing her rich career as a curator, collector, library executive and a dynamic New Yorker.

Purchase the book: https://shop.themorgan.org/collections/exhibition-catalogs/products/belle-da-costa-greene-a-librarian-s-legacy

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Published by the Morgan Library & Museum and DelMonico Books • D.A.P.

I think if I were to choose my six favorite books (and were limited to that number) I’d take Alice in Wonderland, the Bi...
01/09/2025

I think if I were to choose my six favorite books (and were limited to that number) I’d take Alice in Wonderland, the Bible, the Mille Nuits, Rabelais, the Apocrypha, the Miracle Plays, Casanova—oh! dear I’m only just beginning and there’s 7 already . . .
—Belle da Costa Greene to Bernard Berenson, January 29, 1915

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Lewis Carroll (1832 - 1898)
Alice's adventures in Wonderland; and, Through the looking-glass and what Alice found there
New York: Hurst and Company, [1896]
The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., 1987, PML 352123. Photography by Janny Chiu

Andy Warhol’s iconic portrayal of Franz Kafka is part of his Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century series. A st...
01/08/2025

Andy Warhol’s iconic portrayal of Franz Kafka is part of his Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century series. A striking blend of celebrity culture and historical homage, this work evokes both praise and controversy, offering a powerful reflection on identity, legacy, and artistic interpretation.

Warhol’s series also includes Sarah Bernhardt, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and the Marx Brothers. The series was met with widely diverging responses: many critics deemed it exploitative, and, in The New York Times, critic Hilton Kramer wrote “it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil.” However, the Jewish dealers, curators, and cultural groups with whom Warhol conceived and showed the portraits saw it as honoring Jewish achievement

This work is based on a 1917 photograph, the only surviving image of Kafka with his fiancée Felice Bauer, which they sat for during their second engagement. Warhol cropped Bauer out of the image and focused in on Kafka’s face.

Andy Warhol, Franz Kafka, 1980. Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York

Artists Rights Society (ARS)

Fashion, art, and a bit of mystery—this 18th-century portrait was once thought to be of a duchess, but now tells the sto...
01/07/2025

Fashion, art, and a bit of mystery—this 18th-century portrait was once thought to be of a duchess, but now tells the story of London’s stylish strolls by the Thames!
In the 1940s many drawings entered the collection from the estate of Jack Morgan , J.P. Morgan’s son. Jack gifted several eighteenth-century portraits of women, including this drawing by Thomas Gainsborough purchased by his father and once believed to be of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. The work is now recognized as one of a group of preparatory drawings for The Richmond Water-Walk, an unrealized painting of fashionable women taking a stroll by the River Thames in London.

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Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788)
Lady Walking in a Garden, ca. 1785
Black and white chalks with smudging, worked wet and dry, watercolor
The Morgan Library & Museum, acquired from the Estate of J. P. Morgan Jr., 1943; III, 63b

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About the Morgan

The Morgan Library & Museum began as the personal library of financier, collector, and cultural benefactor Pierpont Morgan. Today it is a museum, independent research library, music venue, architectural landmark, and historic site located in the heart of New York City.

A century after its founding, the Morgan remains committed to offering visitors close encounters with great works of human accomplishment in a setting treasured for its intimate scale. Its collection of manuscripts, rare books, music, drawings, and works of art comprise a unique and dynamic record of civilization, as well as an incomparable repository of ideas and of the creative process from 4000 BC to the present.