Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.
Blog
Behind the Curtain: A Dealmaker with a Passion for Tiepolo Drawings
Submitted by Jennifer Tonkovich on Thu, 11/02/2023 - 8:00amOn my first day as an intern at the Morgan in the autumn of 1993, the head of the department of drawings and prints, William M. Griswold, asked me to accompany him on a trip uptown to return a group of framed drawings to Lore Heinemann.
Peter Hujar's Contact Sheets: Record-Keeping and Ephemeral Proof
Submitted by Olivia McCall on Thu, 10/19/2023 - 9:00amTen years ago, the Morgan’s Department of Photography made a landmark acquisition: Peter Hujar’s papers, 100 photographic prints, and 5,783 black-and-white contact sheets. The contact sheets are of great importance: they span the artist’s career from 1955 until his death of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987, and index nearly every black-and-white exposure that he made.
All But Forgotten: Frederic Hastings Smyth (1888–1960)
Submitted by Zachary Rosalinsky on Wed, 10/04/2023 - 9:00amThe Herbert Cahoon papers (MA 4733) contain a series of letters dating from 1941 to 1959 from Frederic Hastings Smyth (1888–-1960) to Herbert Cahoon, Curator of the Literary and Historical Manuscripts Department at the Pierpont Morgan Library from 1954 to 1989. Smyth was an Anglo-Catholic priest and Marxist revolutionary who was simultaneously engaged in Christian theological debate and extremist politics.
Adventures in Choreographic Notation and the Tale of Two Ballet Rebels or Nijinsky/Nijinska
Submitted by Reading Room on Thu, 09/21/2023 - 9:00amIn the summer of 2023, I was fortunate to accept the CUNY/Morgan Summer Fellowship to assist Dr. Robinson McClellan with research and preparations for the upcoming summer 2024 exhibition focused on the creative conditions and collaborations of the Ballets Russes, Crafting the Ballets Russes: Music, Dance, Design—The Robert Owen Lehman Collection .
An Invitation to Peep: Paper Peepshows from the Eighteenth- to Twentieth-Century Western World at the Morgan
Submitted by Thaw Conservati... on Fri, 09/08/2023 - 1:00pmThe Belle da Costa Greene Professional Papers at the Morgan
Submitted by Erica Ciallela on Wed, 06/21/2023 - 2:20pmBelle da Costa Greene was librarian for J. Pierpont Morgan from 1905–1913, J. P. Morgan Jr. from 1913–1924, and director at the Pierpont Morgan Library from 1924–1948. Her career spanned two world wars and the Great Depression.
Portrait of a Pigment: The Magic of Saffron
Submitted by Ann Bell on Tue, 06/06/2023 - 9:42amSaffron is much more than a pigment, and its many uses can be traced back to the ancient world. Harvested from the crocus sativus, a delicate flower cultivated in places like Greece and Persia (Iran), it appears as a spice, a dye, perfume, and is regularly used in holistic medicine.
Performing Femininity: Saul Steinberg's Depictions of Women
Submitted by Jacqueline Yu on Wed, 05/24/2023 - 11:16amFor more than six decades, Saul Steinberg (1914–1999) tackled themes of immigration, identity, war, and other complex issues in humorous yet insightful illustrations for acclaimed publications like The New Yorker. Drawing on his experiences as a Jewish Romanian immigrant who had fled to the United States from Italy at the onset of World War II, Steinberg’s unique perspective and artistic language quickly established him as one of the most renowned cartoonists of the twentieth century.
Fanny Mendelssohn's Easter Sonata
Submitted by Robin McClellan on Thu, 05/11/2023 - 10:26amIn the late 1820s, the Mendelssohn siblings, Fanny (1805–1847) and Felix (1809–1847), enjoyed some of their happiest years. Their social circle expanded, enriching their lives with gatherings filled with poetry readings, conversations, and music. Rehearsals for the now-famous revival of J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion began at the family home in October 1828.