The Morgan Library & Museum continues its popular Treasures from the Vault exhibition series on May 7–October 6, 2013, with the presentation of thirty diverse works in its iconic 1906 McKim building.
The great library was commissioned by museum founder Pierpont Morgan and completed in 1906, just seven years prior to his death in 1913. To commemorate Morgan’s life as one of America’s best known financiers and philanthropists, a selection of items will be exhibited in the library’s marbled rotunda. Included in the display will be Morgan’s high school essay on Napoleon Bonaparte (he considered Bonaparte’s tragic flaw to be placing “personal ambition” ahead of “the future welfare of his country”); a stock certificate from the United States Steel Corporation—an enormous undertaking which gave Morgan control of almost half the nation’s steelmaking capacity—signed by the company’s first president, Charles Schwab; the last surviving letter from Belle da Costa Greene, Morgan’s dynamic librarian, sent to her “Big Chief” shortly before his death; and the iconic portrait of Morgan by legendary photographer Edward Steichen.
Additional highlights from this season’s Treasures include Colm Tóibín’s manuscript of the short novel The Testament of Mary, the basis for his play that debuted in New York in April; a mid- fifteenth-century English cookery scroll containing nearly two hundred recipes in Middle English; autograph music manuscripts by Wagner, Verdi, and Britten; the first book printed in the English language; and writings by Jane Austen and Albert Einstein.
The Morgan Library & Museum 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016-3405 212.685.0008 www.themorgan.org