Museum of Biblical Art

Saturday, continued

MUSEUM: Museum of Biblical Art 

TIME: 45 min

COST: $7 each

Opened in 2005, the Museum of Biblical Arts (MOBIA) is one of New York’s newer museums, but grown out of one of its older societies, the American Bible Society (founded in 1817).  It’s located in a modern glass-fronted building on Broadway, above a bookshop selling what you’d expect the American Bible Society to sell.  The museum had an odd security set up, with three security guards briskly patrolling its tiny two room space and peevishly demanding all of our pens, leading us to wonder what sort of violent graffiti artists normally frequent the place. 

Going in, I was a little worried that the museum might resemble a Christian Science Reading Room, but the museum is careful to take an educational and religiously neutral approach to the bible, viewing it as an important source of stories and symbols in Western art and offering exhibits on a wide range of art with biblical context.  To quote from its mission statement, “MOBIA takes no position on religion, only that the role of the Bible in literature and art is culturally profound.”  Past exhibits have included the influences of the bible on modern artists (Chagall’s Bible; Mystical Storytelling), cinema (Reel Religion; A Century of the Bible and Film), folk art (Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, and the American South), and, of course, medieval art (The Glory of Ukraine; Sacred Images from the 11th to the 19th Centuries).  One of the two exhibits on display today fell squarely in that latter category. 

Currated by Dr. Vivian B. Mann from the Jewish Theological Seminary, the exhibit “Uneasy Communion: Christians, Jews and the Altarpieces of Medieval Spain” used art of 14th- and 15th-century Spain to attempt to prove that Christian and Jewish artists of the time collaborated on the same pieces.  During this period, Spain was a multi-cultural society of Muslims, Jews and Christians, but many medieval Christian depictions of Jews are negative stereotypes and it’s often assumed that Jews lived apart, with little contact or co-mingling.  Yet this exhibit argued that that assumption may not be entirely correct, as artistic studios appear to have had both Jewish and Christian artists collaborating on the same pieces: Jews and conversos (Jews converted to Christianity) painting Christian altarpieces, and Christians illuminating Hebrew manuscripts.  Paul is fascinated by Spanish art and history and had been virtually drooling with anticipation to see this exhibit, timing our visit today to see it before it concluded.  (No, he’s not Spanish, just quirky.)  Unfortunately, he left feeling a little disappointed.

The first problem was that the exhibit was small, probably too small to illustrate its complicated historical subject.  There were only about 30 pieces (paintings, manuscripts, ceramic tiles and Jewish ceremonial objects) displayed in one small room.  All were on loan from other museums, most of which are in New York City (such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Hispanic Society), with some paintings represented in photographs or reproductions.  It definitely seemed as if small, young MOBIA did not have enough clout to borrow items from further afield, but, to be more charitable, medieval art is notoriously fragile and doesn’t travel well, or without good reason.

The second problem was that much of the exhibit’s arguments and explanations were in tomb-like “catalog essays” tucked away in a nook at the back of the room, which Paul and I did not discover until we were ready to leave.  At this point we were a little frustrated and out of patience from trying to piece together the cryptic comments written on the walls in small print.  With some effort, we had determined a few things, like the fact that pointy halos in paintings meant the holy person in question was Jewish (see example at left), and that biblical Jews were often featured in places of prominence and honor in Christian alterpieces in Spain.  Also, many of the altarpieces featuring Jews had extremely detailed and knowledgeable depictions of Jewish temples and rites, for example, an early-15th-century painting illustrating the boy Jesus impressing doctors in a synagogue accurately represents what the interior of a medieval synagogue looks like (see picture above).  Also, a depiction of Zacharias contains elaborate details of Jewish objects and rites, such as a tik (Torah container) and an attendant holding a golden rope tied to the priest (allowing retrieval of his body if he died in the Holy of Holies; see picture at left).  It's unlikely that a Christian would know these details, suggesting that the artist was Jewish or converso.

The second exhibit at MOBIA was “Pearl of Great Price,” a selection of about 20 bibles from the Rare Bible Collection of the American Bible Society.  The society has been collecting for nearly 200 years and has over two thousand bibles and manuscripts.  Much of the collection has a historical focus, with bibles in original/ancient languages (i.e. Greek and Hebrew) documenting the history of bible text in early translations.  However the bibles on display today were of less scholarly interest, chosen as crowd pleasers for the beauty of their covers and illustrations, or association with exotic locales, historical events and/or celebrities. 

We saw the first folio Bible printed in America, elegant woodblocks of early bibles printed in Japan and gorgeous silver inlays on Chinese bibles meant for royalty.  We tried (usually unsuccessfully) to pick out words in translations into exotic languages, such as Delaware, Bengali or Malay, and marveled over the gigantic Braille bible made for Helen Keller.  It was a fun exhibit, but Paul and I would have appreciated learning more about the background and history of each bible.  Looking at them, you knew that each bible had a story to tell, about why it was made and the people who fought battles (sometimes literally) to print them, but, regrettably, those stories weren’t part of the exhibit, so they were reduced to being just nifty books. 

Our take on things: The Museum of Biblical Arts is a very small, very new museum, with both good and bad points.  I was disappointed by the lack of detail in the exhibits, but pleasantly surprised by the museum’s scholarly and non-preachy approach to biblical art.  Paul was dissatisfied by its limited space and items, but applauded their ambition in tackling a complicated historical subject.  We both think that, given time (and a reduction of their security), this museum could develop into a very interesting space.

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Images in this post, from the top: The Prophet Daniel, from the Altarpiece of Santa Cruz by Miguel Jiménez and Martín Bernart, 1485–87 (A painting from the Altarpiece of the True Cross that singles out three Hebrew prophets, stressing their importance by placing them at the eye level of the congregation.); exterior of the Museum of Biblical Arts;  Christ Among the Doctors, anonymous, early 15th century (Painting is set in a medieval synagogue bearing a distinct resemblance to one discovered during a recent excavation of a Jewish quarter in Lorca.);  Annucation to Zacharias, from the Retablo of St. John the Baptist by Domingo Ram, late 15th century.  (This painting is set in the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple. The prophet is dressed as the high priest on Yom Kippur, and fidelity to Jewish ritual is extensive, including the tik, bells on the garment hem, and the chain around the prophet’s leg held by a priest outside the sacred space.); four selections from the Rare Bible Collection at MOBIA.

NY Public Library for the Performing Arts / Rose Museum

5/15/2010, Saturday

MUSEUMS:

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts …. 1 hr

Rose Museum ……………………………………...…. 20 min

COST:

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts … Free

Rose Museum ………………………..……...………. Free

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is not like other libraries. The first difference you notice is its size. As we’ve come to expect from all things in New York, the library is really big. With 50 million items (20 million of which are books), it’s among the world’s largest libraries, ranking with the Library of Congress, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the British Library. The second difference is its collection, consisting of more than standard library fare, with outstanding historical and research materials such as Jefferson's copy of the Declaration of Independence, ancient maps from 15th century Florence, and Columbus’s first letters back to Spain describing the new world.

It’s not just the collection that’s large; the NYPL system consists of 87 individual libraries spread out over Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island. We’d highly recommend a visit to the “main branch” as a great stop on any NYC tour. It’s an impossible-to-miss landmark Beaux-Arts building on Fifth Avenue (see picture above), with huge lions on either side of the marble columned facade and an upstairs reading room as grand as any European palace. It’s iconic enough to be featured in movies from “Ghostbusters” to “Sex In the City.” However, it’s not a museum, so that’s not where we went today.

In addition to the 81 lending libraries and the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library for the blind, NYPL has 4 non-lending research libraries: the Humanities and Social Sciences Library; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Science, Industry and Business Library; and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. This last library is situated in a prime location within Lincoln Center (see picture at right), between the famous Juilliard School and the home of the Metropolitan Opera. It houses one of the worlds most extensive collections of materials on the performing arts, and is particularly known for its non-book materials, such as historic recordings, videotapes, autographed manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters and photographs.

A few times a year, the librarians at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts pull a few things out of the collection and exhibit them in a small space set aside from the library stacks. We’re still not sure if it’s technically a museum, but due to the fact that most of the collection is in media format (not books), it certainly makes for some entertaining exhibits. Just finishing up now is an expose on W. C. Fields (“The Peregrinations & Pettifoggery of W. C. Fields”), featuring his comic radio broadcasts, diagrams of his famous juggling and billiards acts, numerous photos and lots of film clips. While we were visiting, the exhibit was “The Jazz Loft Project,” about a more mysterious and haunting subject.

In 1957, celebrated photographer W. Eugene Smith quit his job at Life magazine, moved out of the home he shared with his wife and four children in a charming village in Westchester County, and into a dilapidated five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York City’s wholesale flower district. He wired the space for sound and furnished it with pianos and drum sets. For the next 8 years, this loft served as the late night haunt of NYC’s jazz scene, playing hosts to the biggest names of the age (Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk) and countless underground characters. 

Smith obsessively documented events in the loft, taking 740 reel-to-reel tape recordings (approx. 4000 hours) and nearly 40,000 photographs, but always setting himself apart. Paul felt he was the muse of the beat generation, bearing witness to the rise of New York jazz, and perhaps forming the catalyst for what elevated the scene to greatness. Major figures to minor players, all did their time in the loft and are captured forever on his tapes.

Yet the “Jazz Loft Project” isn’t about the obsession of one man, but two. Sam Stephenson of the Duke Center for Documentary Studies spent 13 years transcribing these tapes (to the tune of half a million dollars) and researching the events of the loft. His curation of the tapes and photographs made the exhibit possible. 

Walking into the gallery set the mood. The room was dimly light and all around played the haunting strains of jazz, recorded from the loft. The room’s black glass walls held stark black and white photos of late night jam sessions and conversations at dimly lit parties, everyone with a drink in their hand, a cigarette in their mouth and an instrument at the ready. It seemed as if there’s never been an era that captured cool quite like the 50’s. At the end of the room, hidden in a dim nook, was a wall of TV’s and headphones set up to listen to the interviews of the surviving musicians, the NPR broadcast about the project, or the tapes themselves. Both Paul and I found the exhibit to be a fascinating documentation of the merging of madness, obsession and music.

In the same performing arts theme, Paul and I also saw the Rose Museum today, the museum chronicling the history of Carnegie Hall (see picture at left). The Rose Museum is a tiny place, tucked up a narrow stairway in a hard to find corner of the great hall. It exhibits a small collection of brochures and memorabilia from the famous musicians and tenants of the hall. On one wall, a flat screen TV shows a live broadcast of whatever is happening on the main stage. While we were there it played a rehearsal of what appeared to be a Chinese opera/dramatic musical, all done in plain clothes with scripts in hand and the actors stopping frequently to try a scene in different ways. I hadn’t seen a rehearsal since grade school and it was fun to watch, despite the fact that I don’t speak Chinese.

Our favorite parts of the Rose Museum were about the history of this iconic place, including the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891 with the American debut of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. “Tchaikovsky’s opening-night appearance set an auspicious precedent for the array of classical musicians and conductors for whom the Hall would become the essential venue in the United States. Henceforth, a success at Carnegie Hall would be the litmus test of greatness.” We also learned about how the hall was nearly destroyed in 1960 by developers, but saved at the eleventh hour by a cadre of musicians and politicians headed by Isaac Stern. From this story and others, it was clear that many of the musicians who play here develop a deep love of this American icon, and this love has saved Carnegie Hall more than once.

Our take on things: Both the New York Library of the Performing Arts and the Rose Museum delve into the history and culture of performing arts in NYC and both are free, but otherwise they have little resemblance. The New York Library of the Performing Arts features well-researched and atmospheric multi-media exhibits that are well worth the time.  However, definitely check into what’s showing before you go, as subjects vary widely, and you might not find all of them equally fascinating (i.e. past exhibit “The New York Choral Society: The First 50 Years”). The Rose Museum was a much less meaty museum, but this hidden corner of Carnegie Hall might be worth exploring, particularly for lovers of classical music.

Images in this post, from the top: Arthur Taylor, by W. Eugene Smith from the Jazz Loft Project; the facade of the New York Public Library main branch on 5th Avenue; section of Lincoln Center; four photographs by W. Eugene Smith from the Jazz Loft Project (Vic Dickenson and Pee Wee Russell, Thelonious Monk and Town Hall band, Zoot Sims on saxophone, and David X. Younng's canvases and Jimmey Raney on guitar) exterior of Carnegie Hall; self portrait caricature of the tenor Enrico Caruso from the Rose Museum collection; Isadora Duncan's scarf from the Rose Museum collection; Untitled, by W. Eugene Smith from the Jazz Loft Project.

Grolier Club

5/21/2010; Friday (continued)

 

MUSEUMS: Grolier Club

TIME:  1.5 hr

COST:  Free

Imagine an enigmatic 126-year old society in New York with an arcane name, peculiar interests, and membership by invitation only.  According to rumors, many of New York’s wealthiest and most influential are counted among its members, including the Mayor and Chief of Police.  Sound like a conspiracy in the Da Vinci Code?  It’s called the Grolier Club, and entrance to the society’s stately Upper East Side townhouse is restricted (of course), but the general public is allowed into its lower floors for four exhibits per year.

The Grolier Club was founded January of 1884, as a society of bibliophiles devoted to the “book arts.”  The founders were an odd mix of printers, bookbinders, printing press manufacturers, editors and collectors of fine books, concerned that the age old arts of printing and typography were in a rapid decline, brought about by “mechanized presses, machine-made papers, and a general slackening of standards” (from Hard Times at the Grolier Club, by Eric Holzenburg).  To quote from the Grolier Club’s constitution, the object of the club is "to foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production, and commerce.”  To this end, the society publishes and maintains a large private library of books about books (e.g. book making and book collecting), and generally promotes education and appreciation of the book arts. 

The club is named after Jean Grolier de Servières, Treasurer General of France in the 1500’s, and one of the great book collectors of all time.  Grolier’s library contained the great literary works of the time, but it was more than just a good read; Grolier prized books for their physical beauty.  He designed printings just for him and his friends using the finest paper, painted compartments, gilded covers and initials in lavish colors, and he is apparently legendary (in bookish circles) for using the highest quality of bindings and requiring the widest of margins (a status symbol in bookbinding).  He was such a well known book connoisseur that many of the best printers and binders of the era (Garuffi, Étienne Niger and Budé) dedicated printings to him, and books from his library are considered some of the finest examples of the book arts to this day. 

As you can imagine, the exhibitions the Grolier Club puts on are somewhat specialized.  Themes have included modern fine presses ("K. K. Merker: Serving the Muse / Stone Wall Press and Windhover Press"), printing techniques ("One Text, Two Results: Printing on Paper and Vellum”), outstanding private libraries ("The Book Room: Georgia O'Keeffe's Library in Abiquiu"), and book binding ("The Art of Victorian Bookbindings").  Today’s exhibition "Bound For Success" presented the top 117 bookbindings from the 2009 International Bookbinding Competition, organized by Designer Bookbinders (one of the foremost societies in the world devoted to the craft of bookbinding) and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. 

The contest was simple (if you’re a bookbinder).  Each contestant was given the same book to bind in his or her own fashion.  For 2009, that book was “Water,” an anthology of poems in several languages on the title subject.  The top 25 best bindings were awarded a sterling silver bone folder (a bookbinders tool for folding paper- yes, I had to look up what a "bone folder" was), with modest cash awards going to the top two bindings.  As should be obvious by now, Paul and I are great fans of books, but until now we had given no thought to the “book arts.”  I must confess that after seeing these masterpieces, our shelves of paperbacks look quite shabby indeed.  

The craftsmanship and creativity was amazing.  Books were made from all kinds of materials, from the traditional leathers and fabrics, to plastic, metal, wood and glass.  First prize went to Alain Taral of France, who created a book from wood veneers overlapping in delicate waves to look like water.  Second prize went to Jenni Grey (UK) who constructed covers out of embroidered fabric, etched acrylic and silver wire draped to create water-like shadowing (see images of both prizewinners below).  One of my favorites was white ceramic with a rubber stopper (like a sink), another overlapped layers of leather to create the look of parched earth on the front, and fertile watered earth on the back (see image above).  Paul’s favorite was shaped from a crystalline material to look like a splash.  He declared that he would have made his book waterproof, encased in neoprene with a diver’s mask on the front.  We were all set to enter this year's contest, if we just knew something about bookbinding. 
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In addition to the larger shows, the Grolier Club mounts a number of smaller scale exhibits featuring the collections of Grolier Club members.  At the discretion of the collector these shows are occasionally opened to the public.  We were lucky enough to be allowed up the 2nd floor to see one of these, laid out in a library room with perfect conspiracy theory décor: wood paneling, dark antiques, red oriental carpet (to disguise the bloodstains) and a fireplace (to throw incriminating evidence into).

The exhibit was called “Beyond the Text: Artists’ Books from the Collection of Robert J. Ruben,” and contained over 60 pop-up books, if the definition of pop-up books is expanded to all types of 3-dimensional book.  How many types of 3-D books are there, you ask?  Well, in addition to the “traditional” pop-up, there are accordion books, foldout books, box books, scrolls, tunnel books, and some things that are just kind of sculptures with words on them.  We saw them all.  There was an addition of the book “Flatland” describing life in a 2-D world, that unfolded as you read it into a 2-D surface, with the characters (lines, circles and polygons) depicted as cutouts between the lines of text.  Interestingly, while we often link pop-up books with children's books, most were on serious subjects, such as Tatana Kellner’s “71125: Fifty Years of Silence” devoted to her mother's experiences in a concentration camp.  Inside a plain pine box was a life-like cast of a forearm with the inked tattoo of her concentration camp number.  The arm was embedded in the text and turning the pages revealed more and more of the story, and more and more of forearm and hand.

In Summary:

Paul and I both enjoyed this museum.  The exhibits are perhaps a little simple and not terribly well explained but I’ll never look at a book quite the same way again, now that I know that they are capable of being such lovely works of art.  And just try to leave here without fantasizing about being a member of one of New York’s ancient secret societies, imagining what rich and fabulous book collectors talk about with the Mayor at their invitation-only tea parties in the private rooms of the 5th floor.

Rating:

Pauline: 8 out of 10 for a unique take on an old subject (books), interesting art and mysterious old-school NY location. 
Paul: 8 out of 10.  The best ultra-exclusive club run by the elite of New York that I've ever been too.
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Images in this post, from the top: the Grolier Club's lower gallery; prize winners from the International Bookbinders Competition, listed from the top with their ranking, #6 Edgard Claes, #11 Eduardo Gimenez, #15 Jana Kaden, #13 Per-Anders Hubner, #22 Mary Norwood, #16 George Kirkpatrick, #1 Alain Taral, #2 Jenni Grey, #12 Killi Grunback, #27 Christine Sieber; two pop-up books from the "Beyond the Texts" exhibit, including Tatana Kellner’s “71125: Fifty Years of Silence"; and lastly, prize winner from the International Bookbinders Competition #23, Andrea Odametey.

Morgan Library and Museum

2/20/10, Saturday

MUSEUM: The Morgan Library and Museum (http://www.themorgan.org/home.asp)
TIME: 2 hr 

COST: $12 each

An astute observer might have noticed that we’re a bit behind on our goal.  To reach our target of 180 museums in a year, we need to see 15 a month. We started this folly on 1/16/10, so by 2/20 (week 5), we should have seen about 17 museums, but we’d seen only 11.  At this rate we’re going to be spending next December seeing 74 museums in a month.  So today we were determined to make up for lost time and planned an ambitious schedule of 5 museums in a day.  To give you an idea of how ambitious this was, our record before this was 3, viewed in a very full day of 5.5 hours of museum time, which did not include travel between museums or meal breaks.  But this Saturday we’d chosen a group of smallish museums closely grouped in midtown and were planning to be in position by 9AM with our fit and ready friend “Peter,” and felt sure we could break the 3 museum barrier.  We were wrong.  Very, very wrong.

The first sign of things to come occurred when we picked up Peter, red-eyed, hungover and still partially drunk from the night before.  He’d gone out drinking with his brother, who was visiting from Tennessee and apparently starved for night life.  As we plied Peter with coffee and a slightly fussy aspirin from the bottom of my purse, he gave a blurry account of the night before.  I think his clearest memory was smoking a hookah while watching his bother feel up a waitress, until she said her name, which was the same as their mother.  Apparently that’s a big turn-off for guys.  We took pity on poor Peter and dropped him off at the train station, pointed in the correct way home, and then proceeded to the task at hand.  However the diversion put us in a different area of town, and running late.  It got worse from there: one of the museums was not a museum at all, one was closed for an event, and one was closed for no reason we could find.  By now, Paul and I have realized that museum staff can be as whimsical and flighty as the artists they exhibit, and the smaller the museum, the more whimsical it can be.  Rules are often non-sensical; signs and maps misleading, out of date, or just plain absent; and opening dates and times are flexible and change without notice. 

After hiking around midtown banging on closed doors and negotiating a few unstaffed phone trees, we stumbled upon a museum that had not even been on our list for the day, but we pounced on it like water in a desert.  I don’t want to disparage The Morgan Library and Museum though.  This stunning museum is one of the gems of New York.  It had not made the list for the day simply because we knew this museum would be worthy of several hours, and it did not disappoint.  The Morgan Library and Museum displays the private library and collections of John Pierpont Morgan (1837 -1913), a very wealthy financier and banker, famous for the mergers that created companies such as General Electric, United States Steel Corporation, and the original J. P. Morgan bank.  He was so wealthy he organized a bailout of the US economy during the panic of 1907.  (In his day, banks bailed out the government, not the other way around.)  Much of J. P. Morgan’s art collection was either sold during the great depression to Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (and is now part of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid), or was donated to the Metropolitan Museum upon his death.  Imagine a collection so vast that it forms the core of not one, but two of the world’s greatest museums.  There are still some great pieces, including “Old Master” works from Rembrandt, Raphael and Michelangelo.  But as stunning as the art is, it’s not what this museum is really about.  This museum houses one of the greatest collections of books in the world; its a shrine for bibliophiles. 

The museum itself is actually 4 buildings morphed into one: the original library building done in the style of a grand Italian Renaissance style palazzo, a lovely Italianate brownstone (the previous home of J. P. Morgan’s son), a modern annex building, and a large blocky atrium-like structure that joins everything together with a series of internal covered courtyards and gallery spaces.  The atrium structure was done in a simple modern style that contrasts jarringly with the classic designs of original library and brownstone, and has been heavily criticized in the press.  One paper described it as looking like someone “dropped a box of tissues, Gulliver-sized, between the buildings.”  I think I agree with the critics; looking at his original library buildings, Morgan obviously had a very clear idea of what he liked (elaborate Renaissance style architecture) and it really doesn’t mesh with something that looks like it was designed by Ikea.

The original library building is by far the most impressive part of the museum, and showcases wealth and extravagance to a gaudy extreme.  You enter into a dramatic rotunda (see picture above), with a marble mosaic floor, columns of lapis lazuli, and variegated marble wall panels.  Statues and busts peer at your from all corners, and above your head this lavish hall is topped with a gilded ceiling mural inspired by Raphael's ceiling paintings for the Vatican.  This was the original entrance to the library and study of J. P. Morgan and was clearly intended to shock and awe the visitor and establish that you are about to see the one of the wealthiest and influential men of the time.  On one side of the rotunda you enter J. P. Morgan’s study, once called “the most beautiful room in the world.”  His portrait glowers at you from above the massive fireplace, and pieces of his incredible collection lie scattered about the room like the world’s most expensive knickknacks: an Etruscan cista (bronze jar) from 300 B.C. engraved with figures from the Trojan War sits on a table near the fire; an ancient Chinese oxblood vase hides in a shadowed corner; paintings by Italian masters line the walls, and myriad marble carvings and bejeweled golden altars lie scattered on shelves like trinkets. 

As lovely as all this is, you have yet to see the largest and grandest room of all.  On the other side of the rotunda is the library itself (see picture at the top of the post).  The 30 ft walls are lined with a triple tier of inlaid walnut bookcases containing a collection so vast it’s difficult to describe, some examples are: the original manuscript of Dickens's “A Christmas Carol”; the scraps of paper on which Bob Dylan jotted down "Blowin' in the Wind"; Henry David Thoreau’s journals; a Percy Shelley notebook; originals of poems by Robert Burns; autographed and annotated scores from Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Mahler and Verdi; Mozart's Haffner Symphony in D Major; three Gutenberg bibles; and over 600 volumes of the world's finest collection of illuminated medieval and Renaissance manuscripts (see pictures).

As you walk along the lower tiers of the library and read the titles you can tell that the scope is amazing, but one of the problems that both Paul and I had with the museum is that the majority of the collection is inaccessible.  You only see what is put out for exhibit that day.  While we were there, they had exhibits on illuminated manuscripts and “The Hours of Catherine of Cleves” (considered the most beautiful illuminated book in the world), notebook pages and letters of the poet Dylan Thomas, and the writings of Jane Austin.  The Morgan Library has over a third of Jane Austin’s known letters and papers in the world, but these works haven’t been exhibited in over 25 years, making the point that you only see a sliver of the museum’s collection at any one time.  And even when you actually see a particular book you only see the one page that the curator left open.  We don’t blame the museum for this, of course you can’t have the public handling everything, the lack of access just seems to be an unfortunate consequence of exhibiting books versus other art forms.

Paul’s favorite part of the collection was not a book at all, but a collection of Mesopotamian seals, carved between 3500 - 300 BC.  These small carved cylinders were meant to be rolled over clay tablets (see image of imprint with seal above), marking them as official records.  The carvings on these cylinders were tiny yet unbelievably intricate and beautiful, and it made for an interesting glimpse of record keeping in ancient times.  

My favorite part of the museum was not a book either.  The librarian’s study was open for the first time, and with it a small exhibit on J. P. Morgan’s librarian, the elegant Belle da Costa Greene (1883 – 1950; see photo at right).  She was only in her 20’s when Morgan hired her to build his collection, but she rapidly became one of the most influential woman of her time, known for ferocious bargaining, quick wit and outspoken bohemian ways.  With the backing of Morgan’s bottomless wealth, Miss Greene wielded unmatched power in the art world and was known as the most astute appraiser of her day.  She moved easily in the most elite of society, but hid a secret all her life; she was actually a light skinned African American.  I find her amazing success in that fiercely racist and sexist era to be inspiring.

In summary, Paul and I both agree that this living memorial to J. P. Morgan’s incredible wealth and extravagance was definitely worth a visit.  Book lovers will be awe inspired.  But we strongly suggest you check the web page to see what’s on display before you come, as what is on exhibit will be the only things you see. 

Images in this post, from the top: photographs of the library, rotunda and rotunda ceiling of the Morgan Library and Museum, designed by Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909); gilt silver, enamel, and jeweled bookcover, probably Salzburg, ca. 760–90; details of St. Ambrose and The Mouth of Hell, from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Illuminated by the Master of Catherine of Cleves, The Netherlands ca. 1440; A Winged Hero Pursuing Two Ostriches, a cylinder seal and impression, Mesopotamia ca. 1250–1150 B.C.; and photograph of Belle de Costa Greene, image taken from the cover of the book “An Iluminated Life; Belle de Costa Greene’s Journey from Prejudice to Privilege” by Heidi Ardizzone.