Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Security was critical to Pierpont Morgan, especially with his treasures concentrated in a well-publicized, gleaming new building. He took a number of measures to protect the building and its contents, utilizing both a professional security staff and the latest technology.
In this unwelcome new age of social distance and self-isolation, when many of us hardly venture beyond the thresholds of our homes, I find myself thinking about Nellie Mae Rowe’s “playhouse.”
I recently came across a pair of letters that shed new light on the youth and education of the Morgan’s inaugural Director, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950).
In June of 2019, around sixty of the Morgan's most treasured medieval manuscripts were sent to Cleveland and Austin as part of the tour for our exhibition Terrors, Aliens, Wonders. Lending these treasures is a great way for us to share our collection with a wider audience, especially those far afield from New York City, but we miss them nonetheless.
The first author known by name in history was a woman: Enheduanna. She received this name, which means “high priestess, ornament of heaven” in Sumerian, upon her appointment to the temple of the moon god in Ur, a city in southern Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq.
Since 2006, the Morgan and Boston Early Music Festival have partnered to present outstanding early music concerts in Gilder Lehrman Hall. These include renowned instrumental and vocal ensembles plus celebrated semi-staged productions of lesser-known Baroque operas. Although Nevermind (Anna Besson, flute, Louis Creac’h, violin, Robin Pharo, viola da gamba, Jean Rondeau, harpsichord) is not able to perform in our auditorium this year, we are delighted to launch a series of streaming concert broadcasts, beginning on Friday, October 16, 8 PM (EST).
Pierpont Morgan’s librarian, Belle da Costa Greene (1883–1950), shepherded the banker’s collections beginning in 1905 and continued doing so for many years after his death in 1913, working alongside his son and eventually serving as the museum’s first director from 1928 until her retirement in 1949. After the Morgan opened its doors as a public institution, the drawings collection—established by Morgan in 1909—continued to grow through gifts from the Morgan family and from a small number of patrons, as well as through select purchases.
We asked some of the Morgan’s drawing and prints curators what their favorite portraits in the Morgan’s collections were, here are their answers.
Once the Pierpont Morgan Library’s newly-completed Annex building opened to the public in 1928, the Library’s activities and staff expanded. The collection of prints and drawings could be consulted by scholars in the Reading Room, and works were routinely included in presentations in the main exhibition gallery.
After the death of his mother in 1924, J. P. Morgan, Jr., resolved to tear down his parent’s brownstone on the corner of Madison and Thirty-Sixth Street and erect a building adjacent to his father’s library. This new structure, known as the Annex, would allow the institution he founded in his father’s name to serve the public.
