Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy on the Morgan Library & Museum is a surprise to behold. In honor of the establishment’s a hundredth anniversary, the exhibition illustrates its inaugural director’s wondrous and trendsetting life. A spread of archival and visible materials paint a nuanced and considerate picture of who Greene was as a “passing” Black girl and prestigious librarian who assembled a world-renowned assortment of uncommon books, manuscripts, and artwork.
Upon getting into, the exhibition units the scene of Greene’s New York: Svenska Biografteatern’s silent movie depicts the town at a second of commercial transformation through which streetcars and electrical trolleys coexist with horse-drawn carriages. Early Twentieth-century New Yorkers put on high hats and fits as they navigate a quickly rising metropolis. From there, guests can enter completely different rooms, the place installations of archival paperwork, art work, books, and extra are discovered.
We get to know Greene from varied views; the exhibition consists of portraits of her, uncommon books that she collected for the Morgan, household archives, and historic materials that offers perception into her sociocultural milieu. She was born Belle Marion Greener in an upper-class Black Washington, DC, neighborhood. She started passing as White, alongside together with her mom and siblings, after transferring to New York and constructing a notable profession in library science with a give attention to uncommon books and illuminated manuscripts.
Clarence H. White, “Belle da Costa Greene” (1911), platinum print, Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, The Harvard College Middle for Italian Renaissance Research
The primary {photograph} on view comes from a collection of portraits taken of Greene by Clarence H. White in 1911. She is posed in a studio sporting white gloves, her curly hair lined by a trendy hat. Her racial ambiguity — olive pores and skin and darkish hair — is obvious beneath her balanced facial expressions, particularly given what we all know of her household from the introductory wall textual content. We additionally be taught from the didactics that Greene was sad with White’s images, through which her pores and skin shade is just not lightened.
Archival traces — census data, private ephemera, and pictures — associated to Greene’s household present an interesting context for her upbringing. Her mom, Genevieve, hailed from Georgetown’s free Black neighborhood and is listed in a c. 1880 fundraising flier as a committee member at Washington, DC’s fifteenth Road Presbyterian Church, an important cultural and political heart for African People and abolitionists. Greene’s father, Richard T. Greener, was the primary Black graduate of Harvard and have become a notable professor, advocate, and diplomat within the nineteenth century.
A particular archival discover on show is the earliest identified {photograph} of Greene, on the age of 20. It reveals her together with her friends at Amherst School’s Summer time Faculty of Library Economic system in 1900. A gaggle {photograph} of this nature helps point out how Greene may mix in visually together with her White friends.
Amherst School Summer time Faculty, Fletcher Course in Library Economic system, Class of 1900 (1900), Amherst School Archives
In 1902, earlier than serving as J.P. Morgan’s private librarian, she took a job at Princeton College’s library within the wake of intense racial tensions. Whereas she was seemingly passing as White on the time, she succeeded in buying quite a few texts associated to slavery and racism, akin to a pamphlet about an enslaved girl named Matilda who was in a position to escape and handed as White earlier than being captured and returned to bondage.
Whereas Clarence H. White’s images represented a refined authenticity in Greene that she discovered unsettling whereas passing as White, particularly on the top of her profession, different artists depicted her in additional grandiose methods. French artist Paul César Helleu visited New York to design Grand Central Terminal’s unique ceiling ornament and sketched a portrait of Greene as a White girl sporting a trendy plumed hat. Greene was not a fan of the drawing, and Helleu was quoted within the New York Instances expressing confusion about how she was a lady and a librarian.
Clara Tice, “Anteater” (c. 1922), The Morgan Library & Museum
Greene collected equally incredible artwork. She was forward of her time in gathering Persian and Mughal artwork, particularly after encountering Charles Hercules Learn’s assortment throughout a visit to Munich. She additionally introduced works of recent artwork into the Morgan, akin to Clara Tice’s “Anteater” (c. 1922).
The topic of Greene’s racial passing is a posh one that isn’t simply approached by anybody who has not shared her expertise. Nonetheless, the curatorial crew handles it with rigor and care. Whereas it’s not possible to know Greene’s exact ideas and emotions, particularly since she burned many private papers and diaries, the exhibition shares a context for passing that elucidates the nuance of such a phenomenon. Archibald Motley Jr.’s “The Octoroon Girl” (1925) is one in all three sister work in a collection depicting mixed-race ladies whose socioeconomic standing is set partly by their proximity to whiteness. Carl Van Vechten’s portrait of creator (and fellow librarian) Nella Larsen is on show subsequent to a duplicate of her influential novel, Passing (1929), which addresses the psychological toll of passing. Inside the gallery area devoted to the topic, a display performs clips from the movies Veiled Aristocrats (1932) and Imitation of Life (1934), each of which depict racial passing.
Whereas the exhibition is complete, it concurrently respects that which we will by no means find out about Greene’s interiority. A whole lot of artworks, historic artifacts, and archival paperwork element the pioneering librarian’s beautiful style, monumental privilege, and hid household historical past.
George Kendall Warren, “Richard T. Greener in Harvard’s Class Album” (1870), The Morgan Library & Museum 
“Gospels of Judith of Flanders,” in Latin England (1054–64), The Morgan Library & Museum 
Paul-César Helleu, “Portrait of Belle da Costa Greene” (1913) (picture Alexandra M. Thomas/Hyperallergic)
Charles Dickens, “Our Mutual Friend” (1865), The Morgan Library & Museum. 
Archibald Motley, “The Octoroon Girl” (1925) (picture Alexandra M. Thomas/Hyperallergic)
Gertrude Tuxen, “Genevieve Van Vliet Greene, Belle da Costa Greene’s mother, on an outing in the Hudson River Vallery near Bear Mountain” (c. 1939), The Morgan Library & Museum.
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy continues on the Morgan Library & Museum (225 Madison Avenue, Murray Hill, Manhattan) by way of Might 4. The exhibition was organized by Philip Palmer and Erica Ciallela.
