Morgan Library & Museum, formerly called the Pierpont Morgan Library, is a museum and center for scholarly research in New York City. The museum ranks among the world’s greatest treasuries of artistic, historical, literary, and musical works. The collection consists of rare books and manuscripts, prints and drawings, paintings, ancient artifacts, and other art objects. It concentrates on the art, history, and literature of Western civilization from the Middle Ages to the 1900’s.
The Morgan Library & Museum began in the 1890’s as the private library collection of American banker J. P. Morgan, Sr. His son, J. P. Morgan, Jr., established the collection as a public institution in 1924 called the Pierpont Morgan Library. The museum is in a complex of buildings between Madison and Fifth avenues on 36th Street. The complex includes the former town house of J. P. Morgan, Jr. It also includes the library commissioned by J. P. Morgan, Sr., which was designed by the firm of McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1906. The museum collection continues to be enlarged. In 2006, the library opened expanded facilities designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.
