Morgan Library

Morgan Library 10/27/06

Anna Lou Ashby is a curator at the Morgan that gave us the tour. It is an independent research library with a very strong museum function. Pierpont Morgan was one of the great collectors of the 20th century. J.P. Morgan was a banker and collector. They wanted to establish an institution for public use. It holds works primarily from Western civilizations. They have old master drawings but they do not buy paintings. Morgan collected paintings but when he died, he decided to give them away to other museums. Pierpont was President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also have old watches and sculptures. They have a strong interest in art so they continue to buy drawings but not paintings. There is a major collection of printed books. Printed type started in the West with Gutenberg in 1450. Morgan collection of 15th century printing is the biggest in the country. Incunabula’s (implying the “infancy”) were printed between 1455-1500. 1501 starts the 16th century. The Morgans fine-bindings collection is the best in the world. The Morgans were great collectors and the have great curators so they continue to acquire. They have a collection of children books in the form of chap-books. Chap men sold cheap books on the street. The market for children books started at the turn of the 18th century. Pictures were produced for children. They are very concerned about the intellectual content, but they look at books as objects. Today they buy education toys and games. The early children’s books collection is part of that.

She is working on the early women writers collection. One of the writers she is featuring is Margaret Fuller and her comments on the role of women in the modern world. Fuller died in a shipwreck off of Long Island and they have a letter of hers to Emerson when she was coming back from Italy and it said “watch out for a shipwreck.” There is an “At Home and Abroad” compilation made by her brother of reports send to New York newspapers. She was one of the first transatlantic reporters. There are also a lot of European writers featured in this collection.

The library also holds original Austen, Dickens and Bob Dylan manuscripts. Friday night from 6-9 pm is free. We had admission to all the exhibitions. There are also some science manuscripts (like the first editions of Galileo and Copernicus). This library tries to build its collections by things that relate. They have Near Eastern cylinder seals made out of semi-precious stones.

Music manuscripts include Mozart, Schubert, and some modern composers as well as a Mozart show itself. We were shown the Marble Hall and asked to be sensitive to the doorways. The Marble Hall used to be the entrance but now the entrance is on Madison Avenue. The Medieval Manuscript Department holds Dante’s Inferno and roman architecture by Aliberti. The labels tell you what the work is at the top and when/how it was acquired at the bottom. Ms. Morgan Jr. collected books on gardening and architecture and her sons donated her collections.

1485 – Le Morte d’Artur: there are only two copies of this book left; the other is in England. It was purchased by Pierpont in 1911. The manuscript of Book I of Paradise Lost by John Milton (1608-74) was purchased by Pierpont in 1904. They control the light and temperature in the glass cases because collections in paper have chemicals that are affected. The first printed edition of William Blake’s “Songs of Innocence” (1789). Blake printed it himself and etched the plate, controlled the color and writing on it. He was trained as an engineer. This copy was printed by Blake for his friends in 1794.

Photographs of Native Americans by Edward Curtis (1868-1952) to preserve what he knew about Indians. The Morgans helped pay for this project. It was purchased between 1907-1930.

The copy of King Richard II, owned by D.H. Lawrence, has comparative notes with his girlfriend, Jesse Chambers (1907). Research libraries hold these because of the special annotations that serve as research material.

We saw:
Byron’s manuscript of Don Juan, autographed (1818-1820).
The typed script of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” (1894).
Drawing books by Jean de Brunhoff (1899-1937) of “The Story of Babar” that show the creative process.
Galileo’s manuscript on the back of an envelope from the 14-25 of January, 1611.
Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1838) with French illustrations of J.J. Grandville.
Thoreau’s journal from August 1852 to January 1853.
Lewis Carrol’s “Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There” with 50 illustrations (1872).
Ibn Bakhtishu, Manafi al-Hayawar (“Uses of Animals”) in Persian between 1297-1300.
The Hours of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese are images like those on Sistine Chapel. The curators used this to refer to when trying to work on the Sistine Chapel to authenticate colors because the “Farnese Hours” was the last great Italian Renaissance manuscript.

The center of the library is glass encased. The walls and ceilings were designed by Piano and completed in April 2006. The back of the building is 100 years old, designed by McKim. The reading room is upstairs with cherry tables and has natural light coming through and lamps on each of the tables. Piano’s idea was to make a piazza “town square” where you can look up at the surrounding buildings. The Morgan library was built by Charles McKim. Morgan had so many books they had to add two uppers rings before the construction finished. It’s reminiscent of Renaissance art. The muses indicate the genre. McKim, Mead and White is the firm that worked on it. Morgan was not just an anglophile. His French and German collections are huge and he was interested in Egypt and Italy.

In the East Room (library): There is a copy of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455. Morgan has 3 copies of 50 survived copies today from 180 prints (2/3 are in paper, 1/3 in vellum). There is an engraving of Adam and Eve by Albrecht Durer (1504), a collection of prayer books and an edition of the Koran. The columns are covered in lapis.

Morgan died in 1913 and his wife died in the 1920’s. The house was torn down and J.P. rebuilt the 1926 building. Spencer and Aaron’s collections are at the New York Public Library. They came to New York to work on 18th century works collection then went to New York Public and then to the Morgan.

The West Room (the study): the wallpaper has arms of Renaissance Chigi family. The books are first printings of British authors. The ceiling is made of wood with old details but colored design is not original. The original renaissance paintings are on the walls. The First Folio from 1623 and 1632. The little room in the corner is a safe room.

The reading room is for graduate students and scholars only. They need a letter of recommendation to justify that you are a serious scholar. It’s an issue of access and preservation. I also noticed that the majority of the people at the Morgan were elderly. Compared to the New York Historical Society that had visitors of all ages and backgrounds, the Morgan’s visitors were predominately white and old. Observations like this made me question the divides that reserve Shakespeare for the “elite” and convince everyone in the periphery that Shakespeare is intangible.