FRIDAY 6TH FEBRUARY AT 6.OO PM CEGEN: "THE IMPORTANCE OF LIBRARIANS IN EDUCATION: A CASE: BELLE DA COSTA GREENE IN MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM NEW YORK"

BELLE DA COSTA GREENE: A VISIONARY LIBRARIAN IN MORGAN LIBRARY AND MUSEUM NEW YORK.

“If I can make a big institution out of it – it will be all that I or anyone else can expect”

Whereas Pierpont Morgan purchased collections in bloc, Jack Morgan, his son, was filling in in the gaps. To 600 manuscripts that Pierpont Morgan acquired, Jack Morgan added 200 illuminated manuscripts and rare books, The Crusader Bible, a tenth century Byzantine herbal, De Materia Medica, a tenth century Koran, rare printed edition of Aristotle’s works, Islamic, Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Indian and Turkish codices.

Greene had the opportunity to become Morgan library and museum first director in 1924, at Pierpont Morgan death. She invited numerous specialists to give lectures and classes about French illuminated manuscripts of the XI and XII centuries, painting in Islam, old masters drawings, the arts of the Middle Ages, the iconography of the Renaissance.

Exhibitions were mounted in collaboration with other institutions , such as Columbia University, the New York Public Library, the New York Institute of Fine Arts, Princeton’s Department of Art and Architecture,  and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.