The Morgan-An unexpected gift

I have always been skeptical of the idea of special collections on private viewing because I do not believe that anyone should be deprived access to art or history. My trip to the Morgan Museum only reaffirmed my original feelings. Having never been to the Morgan before I had no expectations for what I was going to see. From the outside, as well as the inside, the architecture of the Morgan looks relatively modern but the collections which are housed within would not be characterized in the same way.

Heading past the ropes stationed in front of the glass doors to indicate a restricted area I became excited to find out what lay behind the double doors which were directly in front of me. Entering what we later found out to be the music room of Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s private residence I was transported back to the late nineteenth, early twentieth century. The dark wood and interior design of the room was the perfect setting for what was about to be revealed before me.

Having woken up on that Wednesday morning I foolishly had assumed that it would be like any other Wednesday, but I quickly came to find out that I was very wrong. The rare materials which Dr. Declan Kiely, a curator at the Morgan, showed us were things I never thought I would see; letters and a scroll written by Edgar Allen Poe himself, as well as a manuscript by Henry James with his own edits in the margins. The language that was scrawled across the pages was language I had only ever heard in Jane Austen movies. As Dr. Kiely told us stories pertaining to the lifestyle of Mr. Poe, living literally as a starving artist, I began to understand how truly important his work was to him. Having a small piece of his work laid out before me on a table made Mr. Poe real to me. He was no longer just a poet or a story teller, rather he was now a real person who had lived a life and expressed himself through various creative outlets. But my favorite part of the field trip was getting to see the work of Henry James, a man who was a resident of Washington Square Park during one of the numerous periods when activism and expressing ones creativity was an essential part of life on the square.