Letter from the President

Fiscal year 2021 was unlike any other in recent memory. It is hard to overstate the depths of uncertainty that we navigated during this tumultuous time, both as an organization and in all of our personal lives. When the Morgan closed in March of 2020, so much about the future was unclear. Through it all, the Morgan stayed true to its mission, remaining closely connected to our constituents through newly developed digital content and through the strength of our on-site exhibitions, programs, and scholarly offerings.

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Letter from the Director

On March 13, 2020, just two weeks before the start of fiscal year 2021, the Morgan closed its doors to the public in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We remained shuttered for nearly six months. This report covers the period of April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, and we prepare it with an especially deep sense of gratitude to you, the donors acknowledged in these pages, who sustained us through one of the most difficult times in the Morgan’s history.

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Letter from the Director

On March 13, 2020, just two weeks before the start of fiscal year 2021, the Morgan closed its doors to the public in response to the COVID-19 crisis. We remained shuttered for nearly six months. This report covers the period of April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021, and we prepare it with an especially deep sense of gratitude to you, the donors acknowledged in these pages, who sustained us through one of the most difficult times in the Morgan’s history.

In fiscal year 2021, the Morgan found new and creative ways to care for our collection, serve the public, and undertake our daily work. With your help, we were able to avoid layoffs of our talented and dedicated staff throughout the closure. Thanks to their commitment and flexibility, the Morgan has continued to flourish in so many ways in the face of myriad challenges.

Nearly overnight, we moved core activities and programs to the digital realm and found innovative ways to engage our audiences online. The Morgan, Connected, an e-newsletter launched in March 2020, began as a way to stay in touch with our audiences during the temporary museum closure. It went on to win Apollo magazine’s award for Digital Innovation of the Year and now has a subscriber list of over fifty thousand. Our website had nearly seven million visits, and our public programs reached over eighteen thousand households through virtual tours, lectures, and workshops. The Morgan’s flagship education program, the Morgan Book Project, served almost six hundred students remotely. Skilled librarians and conservators also found ways to assist scholars virtually and to increase access to information about our collections.

In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd—whose tragic death was preceded by those of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black Americans—led cultural institutions across the nation to reflect deeply on issues of social justice, inequity, and systemic racism. The Morgan responded to the call for greater diversity, equity, access, and inclusion (DEAI) and to address the role of cultural institutions in this important movement. The staff accelerated and intensified efforts already underway, developing and launching the Morgan’s first six-month DEAI action plan. I hope you will take the time to review our plan in detail. While there is much still to do, we achieved many of our early goals, including the launch of the Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellowships, a pair of two-year fellowships for young scholars from communities underrepresented in the museum and special collections fields, who will bring new voices and perspectives to our work.

In September 2020, we reopened our campus. The Morgan was among the first museums and research centers in New York City to do so, and we gladly welcomed both the general public and scholars back with robust safety protocols in place. The Morgan went on to present an extraordinary roster of exhibitions, with highlights including Betye Saar: Call and Response, David Hockney: Drawing from Life, Poetry and Patronage: The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered, and Conversations in Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection. We also continued with our mission to serve scholars and were able to add significant acquisitions to our collection, all of which you can explore in this report.

As the pandemic began, we were poised to begin work on Phase II of our project to restore and enhance the exterior of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, including the construction of a new garden that will enable public access to the 36th Street site for the first time in our history. Not surprisingly, the pandemic made it necessary for us to pause this project. In the meantime, we turned to other health-critical capital projects to improve air circulation in our office spaces and undertook important planning work to install a more effective and efficient HVAC system, which will help to ensure the appropriate climate conditions throughout the Morgan campus and allow us to reduce our carbon footprint.

When I look back on fiscal year 2021, I am deeply grateful for all that was accomplished in the midst of the unthinkable. On behalf of everyone at the Morgan, I thank you again for your ongoing commitment, and, as always, I look forward to seeing you in the galleries or online soon.

 

 

 

 

 


Letter from The President

Fiscal year 2021 was unlike any other in recent memory. It is hard to overstate the depths of uncertainty that we navigated during this tumultuous time, both as an organization and in all of our personal lives. When the Morgan closed in March of 2020, so much about the future was unclear.

Through it all, the Morgan stayed true to its mission, remaining closely connected to our constituents through newly developed digital content and through the strength of our on-site exhibitions, programs, and scholarly offerings. It was also a time to reflect upon our priorities and ambitions, and we took important strides toward making the Morgan a more diverse, equitable, accessible, and inclusive place for all. I want to acknowledge the hard work of our staff and volunteers, whose dedication and creativity contributed so much during these difficult times.

More than ever this year, I am pleased to have this opportunity to thank you, our generous patrons. The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it immediate and unprecedented financial and organizational challenges, many of which are ongoing. The consistent and enthusiastic support of donors like you—whether through membership, virtual events, or other contributions—has enabled us to weather the many storms we faced this year. As always, there are too many of you to thank individually in this letter, but you can find the full list of donors here.

Through the exceptional generosity of our Trustees and other close friends, we raised over $2.4 million in COVID-19 relief funding. This provided much-needed stability as we navigated the challenges of temporary closure, reduced attendance, the dramatic reduction of other critical earned and contributed revenue streams, and new COVID-mitigating capital projects. Paired with the invaluable support received from the Paycheck Protection Program established by the CARES Act, these funds enabled us to avoid layoffs and to end this fiscal year in a much stronger financial position than initially projected. Although there are still significant challenges ahead, we credit this year’s results to a realistic yet not overly pessimistic view of the future, close management of budgets and goals, and the extraordinary magnanimity of the Morgan community.

I am particularly grateful to my fellow Board members for their support of all of these initiatives and for the thoughtful guidance they provided throughout this difficult period. During fiscal year 2021, we were delighted to welcome Eric L. Motley as a new Trustee and to elect Mohit “Mo” Assomull, G. Scott Clemons, and Donna Perret Rosen, whose terms on the Board began April 1, 2021.

Finally, I would like to remember a few outstanding individuals close to the Morgan whom we lost during this time. Richard “Dick” Gilder (1932–2020) served as a valued Trustee from 1991 to 2003 and was a longtime benefactor of this institution. The Morgan’s 2006 expansion included the creation of the Gilder Lehrman Hall, which immediately took its place among New York City’s most beautiful venues for concerts, lectures, and other public offerings. It continues to commemorate Dick’s generosity, along with that of his associate Lewis Lehrman. Life Trustee Geoffrey Elliott (1939–2021) and his beloved wife, Fay (1935–2020), were both dedicated supporters of the Morgan and true partners in collecting and philanthropy. The couple helped make possible many important literary exhibitions at the Morgan, including those celebrating the luminaries Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Oscar Wilde, and J. R. R. Tolkien. They will be sorely missed.

Once again, I thank you sincerely for all you do to sustain this remarkable institution, its collections, and its staff, who allow the Morgan to fulfill its role as one of New York’s most vital and beloved cultural centers.

 


Board of Trustees

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Exhibitions

Betye Saar

Call and Response

September 12, 2020 through January 31, 2021

Betye Saar

Call and Response

September 12, 2020 through January 31, 2021

David Hockney

Drawing from Life

October 2, 2020 through May 30, 2021

David Hockney

Drawing from Life

October 2, 2020 through May 30, 2021

Poetry & Patronage

The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered

October 16, 2020 through May 16, 2021

Poetry & Patronage

The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered

October 16, 2020 through May 16, 2021

Édouard Vuillard

Sketches and Studies

February 10 through May 30, 2021

Édouard Vuillard

Sketches and Studies

February 10 through May 30, 2021

Almost a Remembrance

Belle Greene’s Keats

February 17 through August 15, 2021

Almost a Remembrance

Belle Greene’s Keats

February 17 through August 15, 2021

Conversations in Drawing

Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection

February 19, 2021 through June 6, 2021

Conversations in Drawing

Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection

February 19, 2021 through June 6, 2021

Betye Saar

Call and Response

September 12, 2020 through January 31, 2021

This exhibition is organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The exhibition is curated by Carol S. Eliel, Senior Curator of Modern Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The coordinating curator at the Morgan Library & Museum is Rachel Federman, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Drawings.

Betye Saar: Call and Response is made possible with lead corporate support from Morgan Stanley and lead support from the Ford Foundation. Additional support is provided by Agnes Gund; Louisa Stude Sarofim; The Lunder Foundation – Peter and Paula Lunder family; Francis H. Williams and Keris Salmon; the Terra Foundation for American Art; and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, California.

David Hockney

Drawing from Life

October 2, 2020 through May 30, 2021

An exhibition organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with the artist and the Morgan Library & Museum.

David Hockney: Drawing from Life is made possible by Mr. and Mrs. Robert King Steel and Katharine J. Rayner. Additional support is provided by the Rita Markus Fund for Exhibitions, with assistance from Dian Woodner and David and Tanya Wells.

Poetry & Patronage

The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered

October 16, 2020 through May 16, 2021

Poetry and Patronage: The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered is made possible by T. Kimball Brooker, with assistance from Roland and Mary Ann Folter; Jamie Kleinberg Kamph, Stonehouse Bindery; Jonathan and Megumi Hill; Martha J. Fleischman; and Professor and Mrs. Eugene S. Flamm.

<h3>Édouard Vuillard</h3>
<p><em>Sketches and Studies</em></p>
Édouard Vuillard (1868−1940), Garden, ca. 1918 Graphite on page removed from a sketchbook; 8116 × 5⅛ in. (20.5 × 13 cm). The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Mary Jo and Sheldon Weinig, 2019; 2019.285. © Édouard Vuillard / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Édouard Vuillard

Sketches and Studies

February 10 through May 30, 2021

<h3>Almost a Remembrance</h3>
<p><em>Belle Greene’s Keats</em></p>
Joseph Severn (1793–1879), portrait sketch of John Keats, 1821. The Morgan Library & Museum, Purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1909; MA 214.7.

Almost a Remembrance

Belle Greene’s Keats

February 17 through August 15, 2021

Conversations in Drawing

Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection

February 19, 2021 through June 6, 2021

Conversations in Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection was organized by The Art Institute of Chicago in cooperation with the Morgan Library & Museum.

The exhibition is made possible by an anonymous donor, with additional support from the Charles E. Pierce, Jr. Fund for Exhibitions, and assistance from Mr. and Mrs. Clement C. Moore II and Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt.

Public, Educational, and Scholarly Programs

To complement the robust exhibition schedule, the Morgan offers a wide variety of musical performances, lectures, readings, tours, and educational and family programs throughout the year. In fiscal year 2021, these programs were offered virtually, which allowed the Morgan’s global audience to stay engaged despite our temporary closure. The following highlights represent just a few of the programs offered during the fiscal year.

The Morgan Book Project

The Morgan Book Project

Public Programs

Public Programs

Virtual Concerts

Virtual Concerts

Free Fridays

Free Fridays

The Morgan, Connected

The Morgan, Connected

The Morgan Book Project

The Morgan Book Project, collaboratively developed by Morgan Education staff and the New York City Department of Education, was offered for the eleventh year. The program served approximately eight hundred students from twenty-four schools. Thanks to a generous grant from Marina Kellen French and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, the program was offered free of charge to students from public schools.

The Morgan Book Project hosted two Summer Institutes for Teachers and a Technical Support Meeting. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the annual awards ceremony could not be held at the museum. However, participating students were celebrated with a video compilation of highlights of their artwork and visits to the Morgan, as well as a blog post, both of which were shared on the Morgan’s website and social media platforms.

The Morgan Book Project is made possible by a generous grant from Marina Kellen French and the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.

Public Programs

The Morgan’s public programs feature distinguished artists, writers, and scholars in conversation with curators, conservators, and other staff. These programs illuminate our collections, exhibitions, and DEAI initiatives. In fiscal year 2021, these programs were offered virtually and reached over eighteen thousand households.

On Monday, December 7, 2020, the Morgan’s Director, Dr. Colin B. Bailey, joined Dr. Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, for a discussion moderated by Philip S. Palmer, Robert H. Taylor Curator and Department Head of Literary and Historical Manuscripts. Dr. Bailey and Dr. Hayden discussed the genesis of their institutions’ collections and current missions; the challenges of physical custodianship in a digital age; and the roles played by the various directors of each institution, notably the Morgan’s inaugural Director, the African American librarian and scholar Belle da Costa Greene.

This discussion is one highlight from the many programs offered in fiscal year 2021. For a more complete list of programs, visit the Morgan’s website and YouTube channel.

Virtual Concerts

The Morgan’s music program features concerts ranging from early to contemporary music performed by internationally renowned and emerging artists. Offered virtually this fiscal year, many performances were recorded in the Gilder Lehrman Hall and shared with the Morgan’s digital audience.

The Morgan’s relationship with Young Concert Artists is an important component of our music program. Young Concert Artists is a New York–based nonprofit dedicated to supporting and launching the careers of talented young musicians from around the world. In this performance, recorded on February 23, 2021, in the Gilder Lehrman Hall, YCA pianist Maxim Lando performs the rarely heard Jean Sibelius Piano Sonata in F Major, Op. 12, and Aram Khachaturian’s Piano Sonata in E-flat Major. This is one highlight from a number of YCA performances hosted at the Morgan; for more, see the Young Concert Artists playlist on the Morgan’s YouTube channel.

<h3>Free Fridays</h3>

Free Fridays

Every Friday, the Morgan welcomes visitors to enjoy exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and more free of charge. The Free Fridays program brings thousands of visitors to the Morgan each year, and plays an important role in the Morgan’s efforts to increase access to the institution and its offerings.

As soon as the Morgan reopened in September 2020, Free Fridays resumed, welcoming thousands of visitors back to the museum and library. These visitors enjoyed the Morgan’s offerings as well as live jazz music in the Gilbert Court.

The Morgan, Connected

In March 2020, the Morgan launched an e-newsletter and corresponding online resource, The Morgan, Connected, to keep in touch with the Morgan community during the pandemic-induced temporary closure. Continuing after the Morgan reopened, the newsletter and digital portal became a way to re-engage with the archives and spotlight the Morgan’s offerings in a new medium. The Morgan, Connected went on to win Apollo magazine’s award for Digital Innovation of the Year in November 2020. The newsletter currently has over fifty thousand subscribers and the online portal was visited by sixty thousand users in fiscal year 2021.

Museum and Research Services

The Morgan remains deeply committed to its role as a place for scholarly research and for the conservation and study of its extraordinary collections. Providing support and assistance for scholars is the core of our mission, both on campus and through digital outreach.

Thaw Conservation Center

Thaw Conservation Center

Reader Services

Reader Services

Cataloging and Digitization

Cataloging and Digitization

Fellowships and Internships

Fellowships and Internships

Thaw Conservation Center

In spite of the unfamiliar conditions imposed by COVID-19, the conservators, fellows, and preparators at the Thaw Conservation Center continued their work to preserve the Morgan’s collections, while making them accessible through exhibition, research, and public outreach. Working remotely from March through mid-August, staff pursued research and database projects, updated and revised essential departmental records and procedures manuals, contributed essays to the Morgan’s blog, and appeared in virtual programs such as lectures, symposia, and social media events. Research, writing, and lectures covered a broad range of topics and works from the collection: the Morgan’s striking fifteenth-century manuscript known as the Black Hours; the drawings of Al Taylor; medieval methods of parchment repair; micro-CT scanning of a sixth-century Coptic manuscript and its binding; and materials and techniques observed in Persian and Indian miniatures.

From March through July, when the Morgan was closed to the public and most staff, conservators visited the campus regularly to check on physical conditions in the galleries and vaults, while also monitoring environmental conditions remotely through our web-based datalogger system.

In mid-August, with the necessary safety protocols in place, conservation staff resumed on-site work in anticipation of fall gallery installations Betye Saar: Call and Response and Poetry and Patronage: The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered, as well as to prepare collection items for outgoing loan. Work continued on a long-term collections preservation project, the rehousing of the Maurice Sendak bequest, which comprises drawings and set design models for five operas, including The Magic Flute, The Nutcracker, and Where The Wild Things Are. As always, new acquisitions from all curatorial departments were examined, documented, treated, and safely stored, in readiness for future exhibition and research.

 

Reader Services

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, from March through September 2020, the Sherman Fairchild Reading Room transformed its in-person operation to provide research services remotely to scholars across the globe. During these difficult times, the Morgan’s librarians swiftly adapted to working from home and continued to fulfill a myriad of researchers’ needs.

Librarians responded to numerous inquiries from academics, curators, students, artists, writers, and independent researchers regarding collection items across all curatorial departments. Notable research topics included the culture of winemaking in the Middle Ages; original musical compositions inspired by African American poetry; the life and works of American fashion and commercial photographer George Platt Lynes; the House of Morgan’s financial and business history during the 1920s–1930s; and nineteenth-century international law in the writings of American lawyer, jurist, and diplomat Henry Wheaton.

After implementing new safety protocols for researchers and staff, the Reading Room reopened with a reduced schedule and limited capacity in September 2020, one of the first reading rooms in New York City to do so.

The Reading Room also welcomed back its CUNY Graduate Center Research Fellows, albeit remotely. The fellows worked on a variety of topics, including unpublished correspondence from John Ruskin; the world of the Ballets Russes; and extra-illustrated memoirs of the life of British actor John Philip Kemble, Esq.

In addition to hosting virtual classes for the Fashion Institute of Technology and Brown University, the Reading Room strengthened its outreach efforts by participating in the Morgan’s first College Career Chats.

<h3>Cataloging and Digitization</h3>
Coptic bindings rehousing. Photography by Graham S. Haber.

Cataloging and Digitization

As part of our critical cataloging initiative, outlined in the Statement on Critical Cataloging on the Morgan’s website, much work was devoted to the re-examination of collection descriptions in CORSAIR, the Morgan’s collection database. Many updates to records involved word choice, additional access points, and contextual notes that address critical concerns and facilitate research on underrepresented groups. Highlights such as the creation of records for more than eighty titles associated with the American poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000), including items from her personal library, and the cataloging of over five hundred previously uncataloged letters by and to Baroness Marie Blaze de Bury (1813–1894) also reflect our focused attention on cataloging collection items related to women and BIPOC authors and artists.

Digitization highlights include the complete digitization of many works from the collection: a manuscript with prints by Albrecht Dürer for the exhibition Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 800–1500 (MS M.1218); a fourteenth-century manuscript of Dante’s Divina commedia for the University of Naples Illuminated Dante Project (MS M.676); a 1481 Hungarian manuscript, the Kálmáncsehi-Liechtenstein codex (MS G.7); the drawing album of Christina Chalon (1984.40:1-106); an autograph manuscript of John Lockes An essay concerning human understanding (MA 998); William Blake’s The Pickering Manuscript (MA 2879); a twenty-eight-page letter by John Keats (MA 212); and a second edition of Richard I, King of England, a romance printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1528 (PML 20931). A special highlight of the year is the entry of over 1,600 digital images, chiefly beta radiographs, into the Morgan’s digital asset management system.

<h3>Fellowships and Internships</h3>

Fellowships and Internships

Despite challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Morgan Library & Museum sustained many of its fellowships during fiscal year 2021. The Morgan’s fellows continued their work and training in a hybrid model throughout the year.

In 2021, the Morgan was proud to launch the Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellowships, the keystone in the Morgan’s multifaceted efforts to build a career pipeline for emerging professionals from groups that have been historically underrepresented in curatorship, librarianship, and art leadership. The fellowships are named after the Morgan’s inaugural Director, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950), a prominent librarian, scholar, and cultural leader of African American descent. Each full-time, two-year fellowship equips emerging professionals with a strong working knowledge of museum and special collections library operations, together with resources and mentorship to support them in their careers.

Edith Gowin Curatorial Fellowship in Photography
Made possible by a generous grant from Jane P. Watkins

Samuel H. Kress Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship at the Drawing Institute

Moore Curatorial Fellowship in Drawings and Prints
Made possible by a generous grant from the Indian Point Foundation

Rudin CUNY Undergraduate Internships*
Made possible by a generous grant from the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc.

Sherman Fairchild Foundation Post-Graduate Fellowship in Conservation

Pine Tree Foundation Post-Graduate Fellowship in Book Conservation

Themis Brown Internship in the Sherman Fairchild Reading Room*
Made possible by the Themis Anastasia Brown Memorial Fund

Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellowships
Made possible by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence R. Ricciardi 

* Positions that were vacant during FY21.

 

Exterior Restoration and Enhancement of
J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library

This multiyear project will restore the exterior of one of the finest examples of Neoclassical architecture in the United States and the historic heart of the Morgan. It will also enhance the surrounding grounds and improve exterior lighting of the building. In fiscal year 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic caused temporary delays for Phase II, which includes the construction of a new garden that will enable public access to the 36th Street site for the first time in the Morgan’s history. Full project completion is now expected in early summer 2022.

Overview

Overview

Architectural Conservation

Architectural Conservation

Roof

Roof

Façade

Façade

Pigeon Control

Pigeon Control

Garden

Garden

Overview

Architectural Conservation

Roof

Façade

Pigeon Control

Garden

Acquisitions

Each year, the Morgan adds to its collection in nearly all curatorial departments. This slideshow represents just a few of the highlights of works acquired in fiscal year 2021. For a complete list, please refer to the PDF linked below.

Statement of Financial Position

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The Morgan at a Glance

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