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"The closest thing to a human being is a book. I know people think it’s a dog, but they’re wrong…When you look at manuscripts or letters and they’re written in the hand of the writer, you are closer to that writer, you’re closer to the person.” –Fran Lebowitz

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.

David Freedberg

Sidney Babcock, the Jeannette and Jonathan Rosen Curator and Department Head of the Department of Ancient Western Asian Seals and Tablets and curator of She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia ca.

American-born Liliane Lijn is a pioneering and visionary artist, whose richly varied contributions to contemporary art span more than six decades.

“[The film] has to be basically truthful according to human nature. It has to be real. And that comes from your understanding of people and your lifetime experience... You learn from that. But basically, it has to be truthful. And where are you if it’s not?”

Handwriting works magic: it transports us back to defining moments in history, creativity, and everyday life and connects us intimately with the people who marked the page.

Sal Robinson, our Lucy Ricciardi Assistant Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, discusses the artist Ashley Bryan and his 2015 book Sail Away, in which Bryan paired poems by Langston Hughes on the subject of water—oceans, seas, rivers, and rainstorms—

Six months before he died in poverty and obscurity, architect and draftsman Jean‐Jacques Lequeu (1757–1826) donated one more than 800 drawings, one of the most singular and fascinating graphic oeuvres of his time, to the French Royal Library.

Stories play a central role at the Morgan.