The Politics of Art & Authenticity

courtesy of http://www.themorgan.org/img/eastroom.jpg

I have always had an adverse reaction to the words “library” and “museum.” This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy learning or reading, but that my experiences at both these places have usually been horrendous. The reason is because I would always go to these places with my parents. They aren’t bad people; they just would go through things painfully slow. At a museum, my sister and I would always be sitting on the bench at the end of the exhibit waiting for them to finish reading every damn line printed. And at a library? With thousands of lines of things to read? Forget it. To think that one day I would go to a museum of books would have been outlandish. Well, that’s exactly what I did.

Honestly, The Morgan Museum and Library was fantastic. It contained the literary collections of J.P Morgan’s father, Piermont Morgan. The man’s collection was fantastic. He had original copies of The Night Before Christmas and handwriting samples from Charles Dickens. His library was expansive, it was two stories high filled with old bindings mixed in with some very ornate first editions. His study had a vault filled with– you guessed it– books.

Out of all the things I have owned, books have always been the hardest for me to throw away. Even with my avoidance of libraries, I have always loved books. I’ll pick up an old copy of “Nate The Great” and remember reading about the boy detective who solved crimes after eating a plate of pancakes, and how funny I thought that was when I was younger. Books are great. And Piermont Morgan clearly couldn’t throw out a book either.