Morgan Library
Encyclopedia
The Morgan Library & Museum (formerly The Pierpont Morgan Library) is a museum and research library in New York City, USA. It was founded to house the private library of J. P. Morgan
in 1906, which included, besides the manuscripts and printed books, some of them in rare bindings, his collection of prints and drawings. The library was designed by Charles McKim
from the firm of McKim, Mead and White and cost $1.2 million. It was made a public institution in 1924 by his son, John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark
in 1966.
Today the library is a complex of buildings which serve as a museum and scholarly research center. The scope of the collection was shaped in its early years as a private collection by Belle da Costa Greene
, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, who would become the library's first director and served from the time it became public until her retirement in 1948. Her successor, Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr.
, managed the Library until 1969 and was also world-renowned for his own personal collections. The library contains many illuminated manuscript
s, as well as authors' original manuscript
s, including some by Sir Walter Scott
, and Honoré de Balzac
, as well as the scraps of paper on which Bob Dylan
jotted down "Blowin' in the Wind
" and "It Ain't Me Babe
".
It also contains a large collection of incunabula, prints, and drawings of European artists—Leonardo
, Michelangelo
, Raphael
, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough
, Dürer, and Picasso, early printed Bible
s, amongst them, three Gutenberg Bible
s, and many examples of fine bookbinding
. Other holdings include material from ancient Egypt and medieval liturgical objects (including Coptic literature
examples), Emile Zola
, William Blake's
original drawings for his edition
of the Book of Job; concept drawings for The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
; a Percy Bysshe Shelley
notebook; originals of poems by Robert Burns
; a Charles Dickens
manuscript of A Christmas Carol; a journal by Henry David Thoreau
; an extraordinary collection of autographed and annotated libretti and scores from Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Mahler and Verdi, and Mozart's
Haffner Symphony in D Major; and manuscripts of George Sand
, William Makepeace Thackeray
, Lord Byron, Charlotte Brontë
and nine of Sir Walter Scott's novels, including Ivanhoe. The collection still includes a few Old Master
paintings collected by Morgan between 1907 and 1911 (works by Hans Memling
, Perugino, and Cima da Conegliano
), but this has never been the collection's focus, and Ghirlandaio
's masterpiece Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni was sold to Thyssen
when the Great Depression worsened the Morgan family's finances.
Other notable artists of the Morgan Library and Museum are Jean de Brunhoff
, Paul Cézanne
, Vincent van Gogh
, John Leech
, Gaston Phoebus, Rembrandt van Rijn, and John Ruskin
.
The Morgan has one of the world's greatest collections of ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals, small stone cylinders finely engraved with images for transfer to clay by rolling. It also contains many music manuscripts and a considerable collection of Victoriana, including one of the most important collections of Gilbert and Sullivan
manuscripts and related artifacts.
in 1903. It is located at 33 East 36th Street which was at the time right to the east of J.P. Morgan's residence, a brownstone house built in 1880 (address: 219 Madison Avenue). McKim took his inspiration from the Villa Giulia
and its Nymphaeum
. In 1907, Pierpont Morgan helped end the Panic of 1907
by rallying fellow bankers to supply liquidity to shore up the endangered banking system. The crisis was resolved in the library after he locked the doors and refused to let the bankers leave until they agreed to a rescue plan.
Morgan's residence was torn down in 1928 to be replaced by an exhibition hall and a reading room, also constructed according to a design by Charles McKim. The remaining Italianate brownstone house in the library complex is 231 Madison Avenue (on the corner of 37th Street). This house was built by Phelps, Dodge and Company in 1852 and purchased by J. P. Morgan in 1904 and served as the home of his heir J. P. Morgan Jr. from 1905 to 1938 (Dustweller Fornheist, 27).
, his debut in New York City. In the interim it sponsored numerous traveling exhibitions around the country. When the work was completed, "The Morgan" reopened, now as the Morgan Library & Museum on April 29, 2006. With the expansion above and below street level, the Morgan's exhibition space had been doubled; Piano set its new reading room under a translucent roof structure, to allow scholars to examine manuscripts in natural light. Piano's four-story steel-and-glass atrium links McKim's library building and the Morgan house in a new ensemble. Added storage facilities were obtained by drilling into Manhattan's bedrock schist
.
The two Assyrian lionesses guarding the original entrance to the Morgan library were sculpted in Tennessee pink marble between 1903 and 1904 by Edward Clark Potter, the same artist who sculpted the two lions in front of the New York Public Library. The names of the two lionesses are Prudence and Felicity.
's Ragtime
is set in the newly-renovated Morgan Library.
In the Broadway musical Ragtime
the library is the location for the final scenes of the show.
at the edge of Murray Hill
; its street address is: 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
J. P. Morgan
John Pierpont Morgan was an American financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time. In 1892 Morgan arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric...
in 1906, which included, besides the manuscripts and printed books, some of them in rare bindings, his collection of prints and drawings. The library was designed by Charles McKim
Charles Follen McKim
Charles Follen McKim FAIA was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead, and White....
from the firm of McKim, Mead and White and cost $1.2 million. It was made a public institution in 1924 by his son, John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.
J. P. Morgan, Jr.
John Pierpont "Jack" Morgan, Jr. was an American banker and philanthropist.-Biography:He was born on September 7, 1867 in Irvington, New York to John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. and Frances Louisa Tracy. He graduated from Harvard in 1886, where he was a member of the Delphic Club, formerly known as the...
The building was declared a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
in 1966.
Collection
See also: :Category:Collection of the Morgan LibraryToday the library is a complex of buildings which serve as a museum and scholarly research center. The scope of the collection was shaped in its early years as a private collection by Belle da Costa Greene
Belle da Costa Greene
Belle da Costa Greene was the librarian to J. P. Morgan and after his death in 1913, Belle continued as librarian under his son, Jack Morgan...
, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, who would become the library's first director and served from the time it became public until her retirement in 1948. Her successor, Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr.
Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr.
Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr. was an American bibliophile and the director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City from 1938–1969....
, managed the Library until 1969 and was also world-renowned for his own personal collections. The library contains many illuminated manuscript
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
s, as well as authors' original manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
s, including some by Sir Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
, and Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac
Honoré de Balzac was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon....
, as well as the scraps of paper on which Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
jotted down "Blowin' in the Wind
Blowin' in the Wind
"Blowin' in the Wind" is a song written by Bob Dylan and released on his album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan in 1963. Although it has been described as a protest song, it poses a series of questions about peace, war and freedom...
" and "It Ain't Me Babe
It Ain't Me Babe
"It Ain't Me Babe" is the title of a 1964 song by Bob Dylan, first included on his album Another Side of Bob Dylan. The song's opening line is allegedly influenced by musicologist/folk-singer John Jacob Niles' composition "Go 'Way From My Window." Niles is referred to by Dylan as an early...
".
It also contains a large collection of incunabula, prints, and drawings of European artists—Leonardo
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
, Rembrandt, Rubens, Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
, Dürer, and Picasso, early printed Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
s, amongst them, three Gutenberg Bible
Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press, and marked the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the age of the printed book. Widely praised for its high aesthetic and artistic qualities, the book has an iconic status...
s, and many examples of fine bookbinding
Bookbinding
Bookbinding is the process of physically assembling a book from a number of folded or unfolded sheets of paper or other material. It usually involves attaching covers to the resulting text-block.-Origins of the book:...
. Other holdings include material from ancient Egypt and medieval liturgical objects (including Coptic literature
Coptic literature
Coptic literature is the body of writings in the Coptic language of Egypt, the last stage of the indigenous Egyptian language. It comprises mostly Christian texts dating after the 2nd century AD, but also includes Old Coptic writings that predate the Christian era.There have been only a few...
examples), Emile Zola
Émile Zola
Émile François Zola was a French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism...
, William Blake's
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
original drawings for his edition
William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job
William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job primarily refers to a series of twenty-two engraved prints by Blake illustrating the biblical Book of Job. It also refers to two earlier sets of watercolours by Blake on the same subject...
of the Book of Job; concept drawings for The Little Prince
The Little Prince
The Little Prince , first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ....
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...
; a Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
notebook; originals of poems by Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
; a Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
manuscript of A Christmas Carol; a journal by Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist...
; an extraordinary collection of autographed and annotated libretti and scores from Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Mahler and Verdi, and Mozart's
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
Haffner Symphony in D Major; and manuscripts of George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
, William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
, Lord Byron, Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are English literature standards...
and nine of Sir Walter Scott's novels, including Ivanhoe. The collection still includes a few Old Master
Old Master
"Old Master" is a term for a European painter of skill who worked before about 1800, or a painting by such an artist. An "old master print" is an original print made by an artist in the same period...
paintings collected by Morgan between 1907 and 1911 (works by Hans Memling
Hans Memling
Hans Memling was a German-born Early Netherlandish painter.-Life and works:Born in Seligenstadt, near Frankfurt in the Middle Rhein region, it is believed that Memling served his apprenticeship at Mainz or Cologne, and later worked in the Netherlands under Rogier van der Weyden...
, Perugino, and Cima da Conegliano
Cima da Conegliano
Giovanni Battista Cima, also called Cima da Conegliano was an Italian Renaissance painter.-Biography:Giovanni Battista Cima was born at Conegliano, now part of the province of Treviso, in 1459 or 1460...
), but this has never been the collection's focus, and Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...
's masterpiece Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni was sold to Thyssen
Heinrich, Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon
Heinrich Thyssen , since June 22, 1907 Heinrich Freiherr Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon et Impérfalva, was a German-Hungarian entrepreneur and art collector.-Biography:...
when the Great Depression worsened the Morgan family's finances.
Other notable artists of the Morgan Library and Museum are Jean de Brunhoff
Jean de Brunhoff
Jean de Brunhoff was a French writer and illustrator known for creating the Babar books, the first of which appeared in 1931. He was the fourth and youngest child of Maurice de Brunhoff, a publisher, and his wife Marguerite. He attended Protestant schools, including the prestigious Ecole Alsacienne...
, Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne
Paul Cézanne was a French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th century. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th...
, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, John Leech
John Leech
John Leech was an English caricaturist and illustrator.-Early life:John Leech was born in London...
, Gaston Phoebus, Rembrandt van Rijn, and John Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
.
The Morgan has one of the world's greatest collections of ancient Near Eastern cylinder seals, small stone cylinders finely engraved with images for transfer to clay by rolling. It also contains many music manuscripts and a considerable collection of Victoriana, including one of the most important collections of Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
manuscripts and related artifacts.
Architecture
The first dedicated building to house the library (the McKim Building) was designed by Charles Follen McKimCharles Follen McKim
Charles Follen McKim FAIA was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead, and White....
in 1903. It is located at 33 East 36th Street which was at the time right to the east of J.P. Morgan's residence, a brownstone house built in 1880 (address: 219 Madison Avenue). McKim took his inspiration from the Villa Giulia
Villa Giulia
The Villa Giulia is a villa in Rome, Italy. It was built by Pope Julius III in 1550–1555 on what was then the edge of the city. Today it is publicly owned, and houses the Museo Nazionale Etrusco, an impressive collection of Etruscan art and artifacts....
and its Nymphaeum
Nymphaeum
A nymphaeum or nymphaion , in ancient Greece and Rome, was a monument consecrated to the nymphs, especially those of springs....
. In 1907, Pierpont Morgan helped end the Panic of 1907
Panic of 1907
The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic, was a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. Panic occurred, as this was during a time of economic recession, and there were numerous runs on...
by rallying fellow bankers to supply liquidity to shore up the endangered banking system. The crisis was resolved in the library after he locked the doors and refused to let the bankers leave until they agreed to a rescue plan.
Morgan's residence was torn down in 1928 to be replaced by an exhibition hall and a reading room, also constructed according to a design by Charles McKim. The remaining Italianate brownstone house in the library complex is 231 Madison Avenue (on the corner of 37th Street). This house was built by Phelps, Dodge and Company in 1852 and purchased by J. P. Morgan in 1904 and served as the home of his heir J. P. Morgan Jr. from 1905 to 1938 (Dustweller Fornheist, 27).
2006 Renovation
The Morgan Library was closed while it underwent a major expansion project designed by architect Renzo PianoRenzo Piano
Renzo Piano is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize...
, his debut in New York City. In the interim it sponsored numerous traveling exhibitions around the country. When the work was completed, "The Morgan" reopened, now as the Morgan Library & Museum on April 29, 2006. With the expansion above and below street level, the Morgan's exhibition space had been doubled; Piano set its new reading room under a translucent roof structure, to allow scholars to examine manuscripts in natural light. Piano's four-story steel-and-glass atrium links McKim's library building and the Morgan house in a new ensemble. Added storage facilities were obtained by drilling into Manhattan's bedrock schist
Manhattan schist
The Manhattan schist is a formation of mica schist rock that underlies much of the island of Manhattan in New York City. It is well suited for the foundations of tall buildings, and the two large concentrations of skyscrapers on the island occur in locations where the formation is close to the...
.
The two Assyrian lionesses guarding the original entrance to the Morgan library were sculpted in Tennessee pink marble between 1903 and 1904 by Edward Clark Potter, the same artist who sculpted the two lions in front of the New York Public Library. The names of the two lionesses are Prudence and Felicity.
In popular culture
Some of E. L. DoctorowE. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author.- Biography :Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent...
's Ragtime
Ragtime (novel)
Ragtime is a 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow. This work of historical fiction is primarily set in the New York City area from about 1900 until the United States entry into World War I in 1917...
is set in the newly-renovated Morgan Library.
In the Broadway musical Ragtime
Ragtime (musical)
Ragtime is a musical with a book by Terrence McNally, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and music by Stephen Flaherty.Based on the 1975 novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime tells the story of three groups in America, represented by Coalhouse Walker Jr., a Harlem musician; Mother, the matriarch of a WASP family in...
the library is the location for the final scenes of the show.
Location
The Library is located in midtown ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
at the edge of Murray Hill
Murray Hill, Manhattan
Murray Hill is a Midtown Manhattan neighborhood in New York City, USA. Around 1987 many real estate promoters of the neighborhood and newer residents described the boundaries as within East 34th Street, East 42nd Street, Madison Avenue, and the East River; in 1999, Frank P...
; its street address is: 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
External links
- Official site of The Morgan Library
- Milton's Paradise: exhibit review: marking the poet's 400th 2008 ArtsEditor.com article
- St. Benard's Obit for Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr.
- Morgan Mansion, Letter to the Editor by William Voelkle, The New York Times, July 18, 1982
- A Check List Of Coptic Manuscripts In The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1919