I Did It! Visit the Morgan Museum

Cross It Off the List: Visit the Morgan Museum

The Morgan was VERY cool. And FREE on Fridays between 7-9pm.

Architecturally, it is fascinating. It was originally the private home a book collector, Pierpont Morgan:

The original house

After deciding that he'd run out of room for his extensive book collection, he commissioned the building of a library and study:


Recently, another section was built in the middle to serve as a means of connecting the two buildings and housing more of the museum's permanent collection.

Also added was a performance space and a reading room.

Among the highlights are THREE Gutenberg Bibles. Stop and think about that. I actually, personally laid eyes on one of the GUTENBERG bibles. And this guy had THREE. It is one of the first books printed with moveable type.

Walking through Mr. Morgan's impressive personal library, I was reminded of just how much I love the printed word. Sure, computers and the internet are great, but I love me a good book.

Mr. Morgan obviously did too.

"Mr. Morgan's library, as it was known in his lifetime, was built between 1902 and 1906 adjacent to his New York residence at Madison Avenue and 36th Street. Designed by Charles McKim of the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the library was intended as something more than a repository of rare materials.

Majestic in appearance yet intimate in scale, the structure was to reflect the nature and stature of its holdings. The result was an Italian Renaissance-style palazzo with three magnificent rooms epitomizing America's Age of Elegance.

Completed three years before McKim's death, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece. In 1924, eleven years after Pierpont Morgan's death, his son, J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867–1943), known as Jack, realized that the library had become too important to remain in private hands.

In what constituted one of the most momentous cultural gifts in U.S. history, he fulfilled his father's dream of making the library and its treasures available to scholars and the public alike by transforming it into a public institution."

The crowd was very "bookish" looking. I should have worn my glasses... 8-)

I also had the pleasure of seeing the Stavelot Triptych, which is purported to hold fragments of the True Cross:

The splendid twelfth-century Stavelot Triptych (from the Abbey of Stavelot in Belgium) is one of the highlights. Originally intended to hold relic fragments of the True Cross, this celebrated object is one of the outstanding masterpieces of medieval goldsmithing, incorporating champlevé enamel, silver, and precious stones in a deluxe setting.

The relic of the True Cross is held in a small Byzantine triptych—made of cloisonné enamel on gold—that is the centerpiece of the larger triptych.

It was fantastic and I'm glad I got to cross it off my list.