The Morgan

 Mark and I went to New York City!

The bus system between Suffern and The City has changed; you used to be able to buy your tickets into the city on the bus, but when we got on, the bus driver wouldn’t sell us tickets (“Not at this stop.”) and pointed us around a corner to where a hidden convenience store sold them.   It wasn’t a huge deal, but it did mean we had to kill a half hour in downtown Suffern instead of exploring the coffeeshops of New York City.

We were going to visit various NYC sites, but ended up spending most of the day in the Morgan Library and Museum (https://www.themorgan.org).   I had never been.  I took a ton of pictures.  Of everything.

We saw a photography exhibition and then an exhibition of Maurice Sendak ’s opera set and costume designs.  I especially liked the owl costume and some of the dioramas for “The Magic Flute.”  We weren’t allowed to take photos, so I had to make do with some photos of the posters outside.  There were several operas in the exhibit, and we focused on “Where the Wild Things Are” and “The Nutcracker.”  

Then we went to have lunch with “Lime Green” Larry H.  This involved exiting the Morgan and walking out into a NYC downpour.  The downside was that we got a little wet.  It wasn’t so bad, as there were a lot of construction scaffoldings we took shelter under.  I unpacked my rain hat, which kept my head dry, but made me look like some kind of Pacific Northwest Fisherman (in a purple shirt).  I thought I looked dowdy, but Mark said I had character.  We did have a nice view of a fit young banker man who could have won a Wet Oxford Shirt Contest.   During lunch in a French-named place, we caught up with Larry and arranged to meet back up again for dinner later.

Then it was back to the Morgan.

By this time it had mostly stopped raining.  Mark wanted to see more of the exterior.  There’s some extensive restoration going on, so not much of it was visible underneath swathes of plastic wrap, but we did get to see the owl reliefs by the front door.

Then we re-entered the museum.  Back at the Sendak Exhibit, we continued with “The Clever Vixen,” and “For the Love of Three Oranges.”  What we got out of the exhibit was that Sendak was a hard worker who cranked out drawings as he worked through ideas; also he was able to draw in various styles — there were a couple of works from “Vixen” that looked like Edwardian children’s illustrations.  

After about an hour, we were Sendaked out, and continued on to the personal library and study of Pierpont Morgan.  

I was not expecting the enormous entry hall.  Or the dim and imense study.  I was so dazzled by the art pieces, the over-the-top interiors, and the mediaeval and renaissance artifacts that it took me a while to register that the Morgan is more a museum and an architectural folly than an actual public library (although it sounds like one could make an appointment to do research there and they have some of their holdings digitized).   Eventually, we made it into the main library.

  I was expecting a space something like the Krumpacker Library in Portland.  So I had a vision of walking into the library and being able to physically examine a book, but all of the shelves were behind glassed-in grilles.

Allegorical, mythical, and astrological figures bejeweled the ceiling; a bill-board sized tapestry of King Midas as the Sin of Avarice covered the wall over the wide and deep fireplace.  I tried to imagine owning a three-story room lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves and six-hundred year-old knick-knacks and decided that I’d be too overwhelmed to get any reading in.  

If it were my library, I’d want a table four feet wide and twenty-five feet long in the middle of it, with pop-up sectional bookshelves in the middle which could pop-up or sink flush with the table-top as needed.   And maybe a chase lounge desk.

I’d keep the bejeweled, Neo-renaissance art, though.

(Now, of course, I’m thinking of my library at home, which has something like a hundred linear feet of science fiction an fantasy paper-backs from the eighties, and more like twenty of art, literary, and science books.   And some art, but mostly tchotchkes.  And a desktop computer.  Hmmm.)

The Morgan’s main library had secret doors behind the stacks, but the doors were locked.  I did manage to peer between the cracks and can confirm there was a spiral staircase leading to the two levels of shelves above.

The last room we found was the librarian’s office, which held various ancient artifacts and a bevy of Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Franco-Kurgish artefacts.  For a moment, I thought maybe a prism with the law code of Hammurabi might be housed here, but I think that’s in Chicago.

The Assyrian seals were about the size of a finger, and the details on some of them were incredibly small.  I photographed the ones that I thought were cool looking, or of extra-fine craftwork.   What interests me the most about art from this place and period are the winged, pine-cone bearing figures.  In some places, I’ve seen them referred to as genies; but here they were referred to as “griffon-demons.”  

About three hours and two hundred photographs later, we had seen everything we could see and absorb.   Mark managed to keep me out of The Gift Shop.  We went out into the city; the humidity was more comfortable than it was before the downpour, but climbing.   We (okay, I) looked at various building details and photographed grotesques.

Mark led us to Grand Central Terminal, were I wanted to re-photograph the dragons (and horses) in the halls.  The hall they were in gave egress to a bunch of commuter trains, and standing there was like standing in front of a gigantic dryer vent.  However, I endeavored to get some more-in-focus and detailed photographs of the curling dragons adorning the walls.  I have a notion that it could be fun to make a cut-paper pop-up model of them, and earlier photos lacked finer details (the stone is light and they are illuminated poorly for seeing the minutia of the carving).

Then we wandered from the Times Square area to the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.  We popped into a watch shop to visit family friend Deirdre from Ireland and played with some watches.   All of Deirdre’s co-workers were aware of the impending party, and one even said that he was going to be popping out of a giant cake (alas, this turned out not to be true).

More building photography, and also walking through a fairly gay neighborhood filled with guys in muscle-tanks.  And tight black shorts.  There were also some stereotypical off-duty Opera Queens, and some Light in the Loafers casual fashion plates.

One of the more interesting sights was coming across a radio-controlled crane lifting a pallet of building materials three stories.  The operator was on our side of the street while the empty crane stretched upward.  A co-worker on the top of the construction site used hand signals to indicate how close the load was to the delivery pad.

We walked in and out of the rainbow decorated streets before meeting up with Larry for dinner at a place near 9th Ave and West 51th Street called Empanada Mama.   News withheld during lunch was revealed during dinner.   It was good seeing Larry a second time for a less time-constrained visit.   One of these days, we’ll have to visit him on a day when he isn’t working and we can plan a time when we can chat at a slower pace, and possibly dancing.

And then it was time to head back to Suffern.