Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page 7-7

123456 SECTION7CHICAGO TRIBUNE 7 Programming Upstairs at Chicago Shakespeare is made possible through generous support from is the official airline of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Mr.and Mrs.Richard W.Hurckes www.chicagoshakes.com 312.595.5600 Tribune Greek tragedy hits home Sun-Times Reader Today 3:00, Tuesday 7:30, Wednesday 1:00 7:30, Thursday 7:30, Friday 8:00, Saturday 3:00 8:00, Sunday 3:00 By Stevenson Swanson Tribune national correspondent NEW YORK The contrast between the old Morgan Library and the new Morgan Library and Museum is like night and day. The old library was a dark, sleepy place with a small entrance on a side street and a warren of dimly lit corridors and exhibition rooms. The yawns started as soon as you paid your admission. Now, following a three-year renovation during which the rare manuscript and medieval art collection founded by financier J.P.

Morgan was closed to the public, a new entrance leads to an expansive, glass-enclosed courtyard suffused with light. As the longer name indicates, the $106 million transformation is intended to make it more appealing to museum-goers and cultural tourists in a city where the competition from such powerhouse institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art is all but overwhelming. did not want the Morgan to become a library director Charles Pierce said, sitting in the sunny courtyard. wanted it to have a civic The transformation is the work of Renzo Piano, the Paris-based architect whose many U.S. museum projects include a new $350 million wing for Modernand contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago and a multiphase expansion and reorganization of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Creating harmony As in those larger projects, task at the Morgan was to a find a way to harmonize existing buildings of varying styles while adding new exhibit and other public spaces. Located at 36th Street and Madison Avenue, three blocks from the Empire State Building, the Morgan consists of a 1906 Italian Renaissance villa designed by Charles McKim; a 1928 library building constructed by a mid-19th Century brownstone that has been used as the offices. Piano created a new entrance pavilion between the library and the town house, leading into a central courtyard that the architect, who was on hand for the reopening last week, called little From there, visitors can head to one of the preexisting buildings, a new 280- seat concert hallor a new Internet-wired reading room for scholars. quarters were Pierce, a former Vassar College English professor, said of the previous configuration. had a lecture hall, not a concert hall; a reading room that owed more to 1928 instead of 2006.

We had architecture that was putting the world at a distance, and I think one of the great things that Renzo did was to welcome the world. I think going to send a very different As a result of the project, the Morgan added 75,000 square feet, increasing the public space by about a third. Building down, not up When faced with a shortage of space, the standard tactic for Manhattan property owners is to build skyward. But the leaders ruled that out because of resistance from neighborhood residents and because a museum tower would have overwhelmed the three low-rise buildings. Instead, workers excavated the site to a depth of 55 feet, hacking through the Manhattan schistthat provides the bedrock for New York skyscrapers.

By the time the excavation work was complete, the three existing museum buildings looked as if they were perched on the rim of a canyon. people feel the rock of Manhattan is said Piano, a gracious, somewhat rumpled figure with a closely cropped gray beard. stupid to do it for a parking garage. But not stupid for rare Among the facilities located underground is the vault, where most of the 350,000 items are stored. Another addition to the library is a small a cubic exhibit room that measures 20 feet wide, 20 feet longand 20 feet high.

one of favorite touches. Italy, I know a number of rooms that are this he said. not too big to be not too small to be For the reopening, curators have installed some of the most exquisite items in the treasury, including the medieval Lindau gospels, with a gold and jeweled binding that incorporates star sapphires, pearls, garnets and emeralds, and the Stavelot Triptych, a 12thCentury Flemish work that contains small pieces of wood supposedly from the cross on which Jesus was crucified. To reintroduce itself after being closed for three years, the li- first show in its revamped quarters is a compilation from the wide-ranging collections, including seals from the Near East, Old Master prints and drawings, rare books, and literary, musical and historical manuscripts. A sheet from one of Leonardo Da notebooks includes a drawing for a machine that could be used to scale walls during a naval siege, with notes in Da mirror handwriting.

In a 1769 letter to a Frenchman, Benjamin Franklin explains the American resistance to the latest British taxes. manuscript for his Symphony rests in the presentation case trimmed in turquoise velvet and silver that a previous owner, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, kept it in. Among the rare books on display is Stories and 10 by Ernest Hemingway, published in Paris in 1923, when Hemingway was largely unknown. The copy has a special history. Hemingway sent the book to literary critic Edmund Wilson, whose favorable review helped launch career.

And one of the most extraordinary manuscripts on display is Edgar Allan neatly written final draft of his story Tale of the Ragged Poe wrote the story on narrow sheets of paper, less than 4 inches wide, and joined the sheets together with sealing wax. The resulting scroll is 12 feet long. Elsewhere, the creative strug- gle is on vivid display. The heavily edited manuscript of Alexander Essay on demonstrates that the classical poise of the couplets did not come easily. Nor, for that matter, did the mysterious rumblings of piano trio, the manuscript of which bears the frenetic scratchings and scrawls.

Each undertaking is unique Back in the courtyard, Piano reflected on his approach to the many museum projects on his drawing board. The Morgan renovation and expansion had no effect on his plans for the Art Institute, he said. one is a different he said. But he compared his efforts to add onto existing structures to the incremental process by which cities acquire character. make a city by layering one layer above the Piano said.

is a little bit of a European idea, but becoming more That does not mean that he blindly wants to preserve everything. A connecting corridor had to be demolished as part of the Morgan project, and the Goodman Theater was demolished to make way for the Art Institute wing. not a Piano said with a smile. pleased to destroy things CULTURE New Morgan Library and Museum exudes Photo by Todd Eberle An entrance that leads to an expansive, glass-enclosed courtyard suffused with light is among the new features of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York..