Friday, November 23, 2007
Morgan Library and Museum are reborn
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The old book cemetery in the Renaissance palazzo on 36th Street has been revived, earlier in 2006, with 75,000 sq. ft. of modern glass wall structures by the Pritzker-Prize-winning architect, Renzo Piano. He has created a cheerful and imaginative complex, a campus that expands the show rooms and unites the 1906 Mansion (one of the last works of Charles McKim), the 1990s garden courtyard, the 1928 Morgan residence and the 1855 Stokes/Lutheran Church Addition, corner Madison and 37th Street.
Starting at the airy Madison Ave entrance that brings you into a Lobby/Court/Café expanse, after paying the $12 admission you move on, towards the skylighted court, with a small café on your left, facing the largest fichus benjaminus tree in captivity (nicknamed Ben). You may want to strengthen yourself with a Strozzapretti pasta or a Pierpont salad, or a $9 cruet of South African Railroad Red for two, before proceeding with the real visit.
Begin with the old Library, up a ramp just past Ben, his younger brother and the glass-walled open-air grove of tall bamboos. Here is the old world, starting with J. Pierpont. Morgan’s office, with genuine treasures on the walls – four austere Hans Memling portraits, surrounded by more cheerful Italian paintings - and a huge illuminated 15th Century Psalter on a high stand, the writing large enough to be read by all the members of the choir. The room is dominated by a Morgan portrait, looking papal in a bright red robe. You can visualize him there, entertaining Lord Duween and Bernard Berenson with a show of rare books, fetched by his exotic librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, from the breath-taking Library, down the marble hall, three stories of glassed in bookcases, the bindings gleaming. It seems inaccessible, until the attendant reveals the two hidden narrow staircases behind swinging-out sections of shelving, just like in a secrets-filled Borgia palace. You will recognize them by the small brass handles, on both sides of the Library’s entrance door (don’t forget to look at the ceiling panes by Henry Siddons Mowbray.)
This library holdings include three Gutenberg Bibles, Dickens and Mark Twain manuscripts. Although over the years of my library haunting I had never seen a soul visiting the stacks, the Morgan has an extensive research facility, providing scholars with access to the great manuscripts and early printers’ work. The basements hide great values of book treasures and art, for which even the expanded Museum exhibit facilities are inadequate. J. Pierpont and his son were incessant collectors and givers, also responsible for filling some walls of the Metropolitan Museum with their acquisitions.
Among the current seasonal shows in the new rooms an iconic one stands out, Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956-66, the trip that started when young Robert Zimmerman was 15, with a harmonica and guitar. By the age of 20 he had reached Greenwich Village, as opener for Lee Hooker at Gerdes Folk City, and kept moving. Worshippers bump each other, ogling the souvenirs of the trip (all current exhibits are open through Jan. 6, 2007.). If your music is Mozart, the composer’s 250th birthday is celebrated with a display of his manuscripts, from age five on, even the early ones showing a rushed hand, with corrections , notations and instructions on sections to be filled in, as though he knew that time was short, in tight 5x8 note books, loose sheets and larger volumes. This is in contrast to such orderly hands as those of Karl Maria von Weber’s (whose Invitation to Dance manuscript is accompanied by two contrasting recordings that you can play), and Arnold Schoenberg’s, whose tall volume of Gurrelieder took 10 years to complete. There is also one of the five known printed copies of the Italian libretto of The Marriage of Figaro, annotated, and one of 50 copies of a Wagnerian opera, hand-corrected to reflect the composer/librettist’s changes. What insights for us!
Speaking of artists in a hurry, Morgan collected the art of Jean-Honore Fragonard, seen in the museums as the painter of leggy girls on swings (in the style of his teacher Francois Boucher). Morgan’s collection reflects Fragonard’s virtuoso freehand draftsmanship, in black and red chalk and grey washes, in emotionally charged illustrations for Orlando Furioso (by Lodovigo Ariosto, 1516), as well as that of his contemporaries Hubert Robert, J.-B. Greuze and his student Francois Andre Vincent, all working on the eve of the French Revolution, keenly aware of the changes in progress.
The exhibit is on the occasion of the artist’s 200th death anniversary. Aquatint is the book medium for this form of art. If the exhibits leave the visitor too emotionally charged and keenly aware to part directly, one can taper down in the Café, with an old-fashioned cocktail, such as a Knickerbocker Gimlet, circa 1857, famous from Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, 1950. They research their drinks in the Library before serving you.
The old book cemetery in the Renaissance palazzo on 36th Street has been revived, earlier in 2006, with 75,000 sq. ft. of modern glass wall structures by the Pritzker-Prize-winning architect, Renzo Piano. He has created a cheerful and imaginative complex, a campus that expands the show rooms and unites the 1906 Mansion (one of the last works of Charles McKim), the 1990s garden courtyard, the 1928 Morgan residence and the 1855 Stokes/Lutheran Church Addition, corner Madison and 37th Street.
Starting at the airy Madison Ave entrance that brings you into a Lobby/Court/Café expanse, after paying the $12 admission you move on, towards the skylighted court, with a small café on your left, facing the largest fichus benjaminus tree in captivity (nicknamed Ben). You may want to strengthen yourself with a Strozzapretti pasta or a Pierpont salad, or a $9 cruet of South African Railroad Red for two, before proceeding with the real visit.
Begin with the old Library, up a ramp just past Ben, his younger brother and the glass-walled open-air grove of tall bamboos. Here is the old world, starting with J. Pierpont. Morgan’s office, with genuine treasures on the walls – four austere Hans Memling portraits, surrounded by more cheerful Italian paintings - and a huge illuminated 15th Century Psalter on a high stand, the writing large enough to be read by all the members of the choir. The room is dominated by a Morgan portrait, looking papal in a bright red robe. You can visualize him there, entertaining Lord Duween and Bernard Berenson with a show of rare books, fetched by his exotic librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, from the breath-taking Library, down the marble hall, three stories of glassed in bookcases, the bindings gleaming. It seems inaccessible, until the attendant reveals the two hidden narrow staircases behind swinging-out sections of shelving, just like in a secrets-filled Borgia palace. You will recognize them by the small brass handles, on both sides of the Library’s entrance door (don’t forget to look at the ceiling panes by Henry Siddons Mowbray.)
This library holdings include three Gutenberg Bibles, Dickens and Mark Twain manuscripts. Although over the years of my library haunting I had never seen a soul visiting the stacks, the Morgan has an extensive research facility, providing scholars with access to the great manuscripts and early printers’ work. The basements hide great values of book treasures and art, for which even the expanded Museum exhibit facilities are inadequate. J. Pierpont and his son were incessant collectors and givers, also responsible for filling some walls of the Metropolitan Museum with their acquisitions.
Among the current seasonal shows in the new rooms an iconic one stands out, Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956-66, the trip that started when young Robert Zimmerman was 15, with a harmonica and guitar. By the age of 20 he had reached Greenwich Village, as opener for Lee Hooker at Gerdes Folk City, and kept moving. Worshippers bump each other, ogling the souvenirs of the trip (all current exhibits are open through Jan. 6, 2007.). If your music is Mozart, the composer’s 250th birthday is celebrated with a display of his manuscripts, from age five on, even the early ones showing a rushed hand, with corrections , notations and instructions on sections to be filled in, as though he knew that time was short, in tight 5x8 note books, loose sheets and larger volumes. This is in contrast to such orderly hands as those of Karl Maria von Weber’s (whose Invitation to Dance manuscript is accompanied by two contrasting recordings that you can play), and Arnold Schoenberg’s, whose tall volume of Gurrelieder took 10 years to complete. There is also one of the five known printed copies of the Italian libretto of The Marriage of Figaro, annotated, and one of 50 copies of a Wagnerian opera, hand-corrected to reflect the composer/librettist’s changes. What insights for us!
Speaking of artists in a hurry, Morgan collected the art of Jean-Honore Fragonard, seen in the museums as the painter of leggy girls on swings (in the style of his teacher Francois Boucher). Morgan’s collection reflects Fragonard’s virtuoso freehand draftsmanship, in black and red chalk and grey washes, in emotionally charged illustrations for Orlando Furioso (by Lodovigo Ariosto, 1516), as well as that of his contemporaries Hubert Robert, J.-B. Greuze and his student Francois Andre Vincent, all working on the eve of the French Revolution, keenly aware of the changes in progress.
The exhibit is on the occasion of the artist’s 200th death anniversary. Aquatint is the book medium for this form of art. If the exhibits leave the visitor too emotionally charged and keenly aware to part directly, one can taper down in the Café, with an old-fashioned cocktail, such as a Knickerbocker Gimlet, circa 1857, famous from Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, 1950. They research their drinks in the Library before serving you.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 9:39 PM 
