Field notes: Speaking Volumes at the Morgan Library
The Morgan Library and Museum’s Gilbert Court. Photograph by Graham S. Haber, © The Morgan Library and Museum, New York. It’s not often these days that I find myself as surprised by joy as I was on the first of several trips to the Morgan Library and Museum this spring. During our months of semi-confinement my paths to pleasure have been too well-worn for the euphoric moments I treasure, the ones that catch me off guard. I went to the Morgan expecting to be moved by the new Woody Guthrie exhibition and I was; I expected to be awed by their Hans Holbein portraits, as anyone with a heartbeat would be; and I knew I’d be gratified to find a prominent gallery, the first one you see when you enter the museum, devoted to a favorite poet, Gwendolyn Brooks. But the joy, as I’ve said, surprised me. It came in waves as I considered how seamlessly these disparate shows complemented one another without distinctions of hierarchy, geography, time, or race. And without any institutional pandering or self-congratulatory “look at us!” All of this at the Morgan? Yes, the Morgan. They’ve been doing it for years. Well, at least since 2006 when Renzo Piano’s international style expansion opened, joining the museum’s three buildings, and moving the entrance from the sedate side street to busy Madison Avenue. Back then there were those who considered the new Morgan an affront to all three structures, especially to Charles McKim’s landmarked marble masterpiece of 1902–1906. I may have been among them, but not for long. Is the Morgan a seamless marriage of the old and twenty-first-century sleek? By no means, but it is one of those improbable marriages that somehow works. This summer the garden on Thirty-Sixth Street will reopen after a restoration.