Treasures at The Morgan This Summer
New York, NY, May 5, 2011—The Morgan Library & Museum announced today that more than thirty rare works from its collections will be displayed beginning June 14 in the recently restored McKim building. The selection includes examples of art, literature, music, and American history and ranges from Mozart's earliest compositions at age five to a recently acquired letter from the reclusive author J. D. Salinger sent to the dust jacket designer of his groundbreaking novel The Catcher in the Rye. The works will remain on view through October 2, 2011.
The Mozart compositions were originally part of a music notebook belonging to his sister, Nannerl. On view are two pages; along a margin, Leopold, their father, teacher, and the transcriber, wrote "compositions by Wolfgangerl in the first 3 months of his 5th year of life." These are the earliest documented works by Mozart anywhere and an indication of the genius that would soon change music history.
The J. D. Salinger letter is dated July 7, 1994 after the author took a three-week vacation in Europe. It was the last letter written to Michael Mitchell, the close friend Salinger commissioned to create the dust jacket for the legendary The Catcher in the Rye (1951). In it Salinger complains about his deteriorating eyesight, reports on his travels and the impossibility of finding "a decent, huge green salad" in any European city, and concludes by telling Mitchell that he maintains his customary writing routine.
The selection of Americana includes the original folio edition of the Stamp Act of 1765, which played an important part in the run-up to the Revolution. Seeking a more efficient and lucrative method of taxation, the British government imposed a series of duties on legal documents, newspapers, almanacs, and pamphlets for the American colonies. Lacking representation in Parliament, the colonists rallied around the complaint of "no taxation without representation," and the Stamp Act was repealed the following year.
The landmark thirteenth amendment, dated April 8, 1864, declared that "Neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." This was the first change made to the Constitution since 1804, and represents the first substantial expansion of civil liberties since the ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791. The Morgan's copy is written on vellum and countersigned by Abraham Lincoln.
In the spring of 1816, in the midst of intensifying public scandal, Lord Byron left England forever. To dispel the tedium of his life as a promiscuous, dissipated expatriate, he began Don Juan in the summer of 1818. The manuscript on display is part of the first Canto of his mock-epic poem, completed in September 1818. It is written in eight-line stanzas, which Byron found well suited to convey the worldly elegance of his conversational style.
Also featured will be the original manuscript of Guy de Maupassant's Bel-Ami, a novel primarily concerned with money, sex, power, war, and dueling. Begun in the summer of 1884 and completed in only nine months, Bel-Ami represents Maupassant's greatest achievement as a novelist.
On view from the Morgan's collection of early rare books will be a copy of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), which established the foundations of classical mechanics when he revealed his laws of motion for the first time in print. Also featured will be one of the most important artist's books of the twentieth century: Oskar Kokoschka's The Dreaming Youth (1908). Originally commissioned as a children's book, this collection of color lithographs and poetic fragments document Kokoschka's spiritual state upon entering adulthood, and proved to be the Viennese artist's first major graphic work.
A rare fifteenth-century experiment with printing in color will also be on view in the Morgan's copy of a 1491 missal for the city of Langres. The elaborate metal engraving used to illustrate the first Sunday of Advent has been credited to the same artist responsible for the famed Unicorn Hunt tapestries. Together the artist and the printer, Jean Du Pré, produced an early liturgical masterpiece that rivals the beauty of illuminated manuscripts.
The museum's rich holdings of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts will be represented in the display, including the most celebrated Italian Renaissance manuscript, the Farnese Hours (1546), illuminated by Giulio Clovio for Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. Prefacing the Seven Penitential Psalms, the page on view depicts scenes connected with David, who supposedly wrote the psalms as penance for having committed the seven deadly sins. He committed ire when he angrily ordered Uriah to the frontline of battle, ensuring his death. Flanking the battle are two representations of David, one in a cuirass, holding Goliath's head, the other, almost nude, holding his sling. On the right, he does penitence for lust, symbolized by the naked women in the border, probably referring to Bathsheba.
