Any way you slice it, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) was exceptional. She forged a career as a librarian in the early 20th century, putting together a world-class collection of books, manuscripts, and art for millionaire banker J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) and his son Jack that became New York’s Morgan Library and Museum. But her achievements are even more remarkable given that Greene was actually a Black woman, passing for white in a segregated society.
Now, the Morgan is telling her incredible story in “Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy,” part of the 100th anniversary celebrations marking the institution’s opening to the public in 1924. Greene is an integral part of the museum’s history, serving as its first director until 1948, and bringing to life the vision of its founders.
“It was incredible what she accomplished,” Erica Ciallela, who curated the exhibition with Philip Palmer, the Morgan’s curator of literary and historical manuscripts, told me. “It’s not just that she passed [as white]. She was also a woman at the turn of the century. When she started here, she signed her own paycheck before women had the right to vote.”
That paycheck, it’s worth noting, was nothing short of impressive, making headlines in its own right. A 1921 news item in the Asbury Park Evening Press listed Greene as number eight in a list of “Women Who Earn Big Wages,” with a $25,000 annual salary.
Ernest Walter Histed, Belle da Costa Greene (1910). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
She had gotten a job with Morgan in 1905, after three years working at the Princeton University Library in New Jersey, where she met his nephew Junius Spencer Morgan II. That meaningful connection set her on a path to acquiring some of the world’s rarest and most important documents for the museum library, including a 1485 printing of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
“Belle Greene really pioneered the idea of a blockbuster manuscripts exhibition, not just artwork,” Palmer said. “That’s something I think the Morgan is known for.”
Born in Washington, D.C., to a prominent free Black family, Greene was the daughter of Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener (1849–1941) and Richard T. Greener (1844–1922). Her birth name was Belle Marion Greener, and her father was the first Black graduate of Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur, Westminster: William Caxton, (1485). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1911. Photo by Graham S. Haber.
The show delves into this early history, including the story of the 2013 rediscovery of Richard Greener’s lost Harvard diploma in an abandoned Chicago home, and the only surviving photograph of Genevieve Greener, who began passing as white, along with her children, after separating from her husband in the 1890s.
In adulthood, Greene obscured these origins, claiming that her complexion was due to Portuguese ancestry. She did her best to take the secret of her race to her grave, even going as far as destroying her personal papers. The truth remained a secret until 1999, when Jean Strouse published the biography Morgan: American Financier.
Mrs. Greene, Belle da Costa Green’s mother, on an outing in the Hudson River Valley near Bear Mountain State Park, New York (ca. 1930s). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York.
More recently, Greene’s life was the subject of a 2021 novel, The Personal Librarian, by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Unlike that fictional story, the exhibition doesn’t try to imagine her inner thoughts and feelings (and no, there’s no reason to believe there was any romantic encounter between Morgan and his librarian—although she did have a long-term romance with famed art historian Bernard Berenson).
“I would say the voice presented in that book is not quite Belle Greene’s voice,” Palmer said. “You really see in her letters how much her personality comes through in her writing.”
Gospels of Judith of Flanders (1051–64). Collection of the Morgan Library and Museum, New York, purchased by J. P. Morgan Jr., 1926.
The curators are hopeful not only that the show captures that personality, but that it is also a celebration of Greene’s profession.
“Librarians are under attack in our country right now, and we really wanted to honor that work,” Palmer said.
“Maybe we can start getting librarians to become celebrities again,” Ciallela added.
A 1911 article in the World Magazine about Belle da Costa Greene bidding $50,000 to win a 1485 printing of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur at the Robert Hoe collection auction.
A fabulous news clipping from the World Magazine on display in the exhibition recaps a 1911 auction in which the librarian fearlessly bid $50,000 for the Mallory manuscript on behalf of Morgan. It identifies Greene as “the bachelor girl, still in her twenties, who as J. Pierpont Morgan’s librarian has charge of the finest private collection of costly volumes in the world.”
But Greene wasn’t just buying for Morgan. A section of the exhibition is dedicated to her sumptuous apartment, home to her own collection, including a stunning Lavinia Fontana painting, Marriage Portrait of a Bolognese Noblewoman, dating to about 1580.
Lavinia Fontana, Marriage Portrait of a Bolognese Noblewoman (ca. 1580). Collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. The painting was once owned by Belle da Costa Greene, J. Pierpont Morgan’s personal librarian and the first director of the Morgan Museum and Library in New York.
The work is now owned by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., which has an incredible collection of work by women artists—but didn’t realize the painting’s ties to Greene.
“The Morgan had acquired it after Belle Greene’s death, so it wasn’t well-known and -documented that it was actually from her estate,” Ciallela said. “And I knew that she had this status and wealth and this amazing apartment, but unboxing that piece, seeing it in person, I was just like, ‘OK, I want that in my apartment.’ It’s just incredible and beautiful.”
Clarence H. White, Belle da Costa Greene (1911). Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
The Morgan had always been proud of Greene’s foundational role at the institution, but has been working in recent years to better honor her legacy as a Black woman. In addition to the exhibition, the museum has awarded the two-year Belle da Costa Greene Curatorial Fellowships to two “promising scholars from communities historically underrepresented in the curatorial and special collections fields” since 2019.
“So many young people starting out in medieval studies, or librarianship or museum studies, they see Belle Greene really working against all odds to rise to the top of her field. And to do it at a time when that was extremely difficult for a woman, let alone a Black woman?” Palmer said. “She is so inspiring to so many people.”
“Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy” is on view at the Morgan Library and Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, October 25, 2024–May 4, 2025.