Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy

To mark the 2024 centennial of its life as a public institution, the Morgan Library & Museum presents a major exhibition devoted to the life and career of its inaugural director, Belle da Costa Greene. Widely recognized as an authority on illuminated manuscripts and deeply respected as a cultural heritage executive, Greene was one of the most prominent librarians in American history. She was the daughter of Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener (1849–1...

Centennial Conversations | Maria Popova & Sophie Blackall: Children’s Books as Philosophy for Living

A conversation with Maria Popova and Caldecott-winning children’s book artist and author Sophie Blackall, lensed through Antoine de Saint- Exupéry's original watercolors for The Little Prince and Lewis Carroll’s diary entry from the day he first told the story of Wonderland to the real-life Alice. "To celebrate the centennial of the Morgan Library & Museum–one of my favorite ...

Creative Adaptations of Belle da Costa Greene

The incredible life of Belle da Costa Greene has been told in several biographies and scholarly articles. But her captivating narrative has also inspired creative works of historical fiction, plays, and music. This program will highlight three of the most significant adaptations of Belle Greene’s life: Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray’s novel The Personal Librarian (2021), Juliane Hiam’s play Revels and Revelations (2010), ...

Symposium | Perspectives on Dutch Drawings, Part 1

The Morgan Drawing Institute is pleased to present a symposium held in conjunction with Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection on view June 28 through September 22, 2024. Moore’s promised gift to the Morgan further expands upon the rich collection of Dutch drawings, illuminating their various functions and techniques and their relationship to European artistic traditions spanning from the seventeenth to early twenti...

Symposium | Perspectives on Dutch Drawings, Part 2

The Morgan Drawing Institute is pleased to present a symposium held in conjunction with Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection on view June 28 through September 22, 2024. Moore’s promised gift to the Morgan further expands upon the rich collection of Dutch drawings, illuminating their various functions and techniques and their relationship to European artistic traditions spanning from the seventeenth to early twenti...

Symposium | Belle da Costa Greene

Complementing the opening of the exhibition Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, this one-day scholarly symposium will bring together experts working on Belle Greene and/or the fields relevant to our understanding of her life and career, including African American history and literature, the history of museums and libraries, Medieval studies, art history, feminist bibliography, and book history. As Belle Greene herself wrote in 1937, in one of ...

Centennial Conversations | Maria Popova & Marie Howe: How to Be a Living Poem

A conversation with Maria Popova and poet Marie Howe, lensed through the original manuscripts of William Blake's Auguries of Innocence and Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain!" "To celebrate the centennial of the Morgan Library & Museum–one of my favorite cultural institutions, stewarding some of the most influential works in the history of creative culture–I have chosen several items from the collect...