Digital Book Culture: The Morgan Library & Museum Online

The Morgan Library & Museum in New York is a very good example of how a library that also has an interesting collection of objects and works of art can step outside the usual framework.

The institution was founded in 1906 as J. P. Morgan's private library. Already at that time the collection included some manuscripts and books with rare bindings. The collection as it has developed has become world-famous not for its size but for its distinctiveness: alongside expertly selected illustrated codices and other medieval works of art, the autograph manuscripts of famous authors form the backbone of the collection. Anyone who would like to see the piece of paper on which Bob Dylan scribbled the lyrics of Blowin' in the Wind has come to the right place. But the handwriting of Balzac, George Sand, Lord Byron or Charlotte Brontë can also be seen.

What is more, anyone interested in how Antoine de Saint-Exupéry imagined the figure of the Little Prince can look at his drawings too. In the field of music, too, we can come closer to the composers as people: the library keeps a rare collection of, for example, Beethoven's or Mozart's autograph scores and inscribed librettos. In addition, special bookbindings, incunabula and graphic works (Leonardo, Rubens, Dürer, Picasso, etc.) also carry weight in the museum's holdings.

So they mainly collect objects that play an important role in book culture, in the centuries-long history of written culture. These are not among the popular attractions of “art consumption”. They are works of which, directly and without background information, only the beauty can be appreciated. Understanding their deeper meaning and significance requires more help, the careful guidance of the viewer.

With a well-constructed exhibition concept, however, anyone who gets to know these treasures more closely can take part in an exciting journey through cultural history.

Let us look at an example. The museum's most recent exhibition is about the poet Emily Dickinson and her works, this autonomous wonder of 19th-century American literature. Dickinson lived a legendarily secluded life, yet among family and friends she led an intense social life. The exhibition displays the material mementos of this intimate world: portraits, the wallpaper from Dickinson's bedroom, a lock of hair – and above all the manuscripts of the poems.

Manuscripts were of great importance to Dickinson. She liked to give poems written in her own hand to people close to her. Her peculiar spelling, her little games (e.g. newspaper clippings pasted into the middle of the text) and the sight of the various papers create an atmosphere for taking in the poems that is so intimate and fragile that it suits this poetry very well.

Since the Morgan Library & Museum is one of the pioneers of digitisation, the physical exhibition has been complemented by an online gallery. Here Emily Dickinson's manuscripts can be seen, the texts of the poems also appear beside them in typed form, and we can even hear them read by a contemporary poet, Lee Ann Brown. It is interesting to see how differently the photographed objects, such as the lock of hair, come across in virtual space: they create exactly the closeness and personal quality that tends to be missing in the online environment. And this heightens the intense effect of the poems.

The museum has long cherished the tradition of producing an online exhibition for each of its exhibitions. These remain available on the museum's website, even though the exhibitions themselves closed long ago. We can virtually pick up, for example, a plaster mask made of George Washington during his lifetime, turn it around and zoom in to the finest wrinkle. We can leaf through numerous exciting medieval and Renaissance manuscripts from beginning to end, magnified to a level of detail that would not be possible in person. A Gospel collection, a prayer book, a treatise on tactics: we can choose from the most varied ecclesiastical and secular topics.

But it is not only the topics that are varied, but also the tools used. Depending on the material of the exhibition, sound recordings, film clips or complex multimedia material complement the visual world of the digitised objects. In the online exhibition on the 150-year history of Alice in Wonderland we can watch film clips and listen to pieces of music inspired by the novel. The visual material of the exhibition on the theme of “animals and artists” is complemented by interviews with artists in which they talk about their relationship with animals. We can listen to how Jeremy Irons recites William Blake's poem The Tyger. In addition, in several exhibitions we find curators' “tutorial videos”, which take us by the hand, as it were, and lead us virtually around the exhibition or through the individual details of a single digitised work.

This online material also shows well how many creative possibilities digitisation opens up for bringing the displayed material closer to those interested in it. The multimedia approach and the high-quality, zoomable, manipulable images break down the walls between viewer and work of art. Viewers of the objects can receive more help, and help that is easier to take in, than ever before in getting to know a given work, while directing this process themselves.

Browse here among the online exhibitions.

This was a Poet – It is That Distills amazing sense From ordinary Meanings – And attar so immense

From the familiar species That perished by the Door – We wonder it was not Ourselves Arrested it – before –

Of Pictures, the Discloser – The Poet – it is He – Entitles Us – by Contrast – To ceaseless Poverty –

Of Portion – so unconscious – The Robbing – could not harm – Himself – to Him – a Fortune – Exterior – to Time –

(Poem by Emily Dickinson; the Hungarian edition of this article quotes the translation by Géza Szőcs)