Handwriting Exhibit In New York

[Orthostylos]

I saw that this exhibit was opening at the Morgan Museum in New York, on my commute in by bus:

 

Handwriting works magic: it transports us back to defining moments in history, creativity, and everyday life and connects us intimately with the people who marked the page.

For nearly half a century, Brazilian author and publisher Pedro Corrêa do Lago has been assembling one of the most comprehensive autograph collections of our age, acquiring thousands of handwritten letters, manuscripts, and musical compositions as well as inscribed photographs, drawings, and documents.

 

This exhibition—the first to be drawn from his extraordinary collection—features some 140 items, including letters by Lucrezia Borgia, Vincent van Gogh, and Emily Dickinson, annotated sketches by Michelangelo, Jean Cocteau, and Charlie Chaplin, and manuscripts by Giacomo Puccini, Jorge Luis Borges, and Marcel Proust.

 

Rather than focusing on a single figure, era, or subject, Corrêa do Lago made the ambitious decision to seek significant examples in six broad areas of human endeavor—art, history, literature, science, music, and entertainment—spanning nearly nine hundred years.

 

From an 1153 document signed by four medieval popes to a 2006 thumbprint signature of physicist Stephen Hawking, the items on view convey the power of handwriting to connect us with writers, artists, composers, political figures, performers, explorers, scientists, philosophers, rebels, and others whose actions and creations have made them legends.

 

https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/magic-of-handwriting

 

[goodpens]

Very cool! Wish I could see this exhibit.

[alexwi]

Letters by Lucrezia Borgia? Hmmm.... I gotta take my wife to see this. ;-)

 

I remember seeing a Picasso exhibit at MoMa, years ago, that featured some of his journals. Of everything I saw there, these were the most inspiring pieces to me.

 

Seeing someone's handwriting creates a connection that I don't know how to describe, not only because of the quotidian character of what those artifacts bring to light, but also because handwriting is something that's the most "alive" thing we can leave behind.

 

alex

[amberleadavis]

WOW thank you for sharing.

[inkstainedruth]

Oh man. And I even have a free place to stay in NYC really close to the Morgan Library (well, except for parking of course). Oooh, it's on through the middle of September.... I might actually have time to go east before it closes (hmmm -- is Commonwealth Pen Show scheduled yet? We could go visit my mother-in-law, and I could swing up to Commonwealth the way I did last year, and hit the Morgan Library either on the way up or back....

@ alexwi -- I remember that exhibit. They ran a bus tour down from where my dad worked and my parents and I went. Don't remember the journals, though. I just remember my mom wanting to roll up one of the Rose Period paintings (the one of the two boys and the horse) and taking it home.... And up till that point she didn't even LIKE Picasso....

What people forget is that he had classical training as an artist. So when he broke away from that he still had the academic grounding in technique.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[MHBru]

sounds like an awesome exhibit and reminds me of the one i saw several years ago at the Getty in Los Angeles of illuminated manuscripts... many hundreds of years old. It was amazing... stunning works.

[leprechaun]

I need to go down to the city soon. Thanks for the tip. Maybe itll keep me out of the Fountain Pen Hospital... doubtful.

[sidthecat]

Shoot! I was just in New York for a week-long museum-crawl-cum-death-march: I don’t know if my sister would have been sufficiently entertained to look at a bunch of letters and signatures.