On your next stop in NYC, I highly recommend a trip to The Morgan Library & Museum…
It’s a beautiful museum that nicely combines the modern additions and original Morgan family brownstone. Taking pictures is strictly prohibited, which I learned after I took the picture below of the cafe in the glass-enclosed central entrance. So I can’t show you the beautiful interiors of the brownstone, including exquisite ceilings and immense book cases, but it’s a unique destination, off the beaten tourist path, that will give you a sense of what it must have meant to be the head of the most influential banking family in the United States.
“A student following a degree in the humanities can expect to run through a thousand books before graduation day. A wealthy family in England in 1250 might have had three books in its possession: a Bible, a collection of prayers and a life of the saints – this modestly sized library nevertheless costing as much as a cottage. The painstaking craftsmanship behind a pre-Gutenberg Bible was evidence of a society that could not afford to make room for an unlimited range of works but also welcomed restriction as the basis for a proper engagement with a set of ideas.” Alain de Botton on Distraction
Painstaking craftsmanship is on display throughout the museum. Seeing an original Gutenberg Bible, illuminated manuscripts, and the handwritten, personal correspondence of influential people of bygone eras reminded me of the unique time and opportunity in which we live – where information and the means of production are far more accessible than ever before. Hopefully, we will still value timeless lessons from the past even as we move through a somewhat uncharted future.
P.S. – Also, make a visit the museum’s store; it’s one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen!
