Who was Belle da Costa Greene?
Belle da Costa Greene was a badass. As the personal librarian of J. Pierpont Morgan, she amassed a collection of rare books, manuscripts, and artworks that rivaled the best collections in Europe. To acquire such valuable treasures, she rubbed elbows with the snooty elite of academics, collectors, and dealers, most of whom were men. She was a force to be reckoned with, outsmarting bidders at auctions to score the prize. Time and again, she used her intellect and business acumen to snag the best books for her boss.
When J. Pierpont died in 1913, his son Jack (J.P. Morgan, Jr.) inherited the library and retained Belle’s services as private librarian. In 1924, Jack created the Pierpont Morgan Library, a public research library and museum in honor of his father. Belle became the first director, a position she held until her retirement in 1948. She died just two years later, leaving behind a legacy that librarians like me geek out over.
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy
The Morgan Library & Museum’s exhibition, Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, reveals Belle’s professional life as a librarian for one of the richest men in the world. It also unveils her personal life as a black woman who passed as white in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born Belle Marion Greener to an elite black family in Washington, DC, she navigated the complexities of race in the United States by using her light skin tone to cross the color line. To create a fake paper trail, she changed her name from Greener to Greene. She also added the Portuguese “da Costa” to account for her complexion and racial ambiguity. The exhibition does not shy away from this complex topic, nor does it judge Belle for her way of life. Rather, it reveals the racist and segregated context that would influence such a decision.
Additionally, the exhibition covers other aspects of her personal life, such as her affair with art historian Bernard Berenson and forays into the NYC avant-garde art world. We get to see Belle’s personal tastes with displays of books and artworks from her own collection. Finally, the exhibition discusses black librarianship in the United States, a world which Belle didn’t inhabit, but scores of other intrepid black women did.
Belle’s Early 20th Century New York
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy starts with footage of New York in 1911. On a small screen in Marble Hall, visitors are transported back in time to Belle’s New York. Horse and buggies fill the streets, and the Third Avenue EL (elevated train) runs above crowds of bustling New Yorkers. Everyone is dressed fashionably, and there are no college students in pajamas and Crocs in sight. With us firmly placed in the past, it’s time to learn about Belle.
Chapter One
The first part of the exhibition, wittily labeled “Chapter One,” explores Belle’s family history, education, and early jobs in librarianship.
Family Life
The exhibition tells us all about Belle’s parents, who were members of the elite black community in Washington, DC. Belle’s mom, Genevieve Ida Fleet Greener, was a music teacher and principal. She hailed from the Fleet family, who were descended from free blacks in Georgetown. The Fleets were musicians, but not by choice. Belle’s grandpa was a trained physician but was prevented from practicing because he was black. Welcome to American History, y’all.
Belle’s father, Richard T. Greener, became the first black graduate of Harvard College. Richard was doing the most as a lawyer, diplomat, and civil rights political activist. He was also a librarian and professor at the University of South Carolina. Richard was a lover of books, a passion he passed down to Belle. Like father, like daughter.
Genevieve and Richard got married in 1874. Belle Marion Greener, born on November 26, 1879, was their fourth child. Sometime in the 1890s, Genevieve and Richard separated. It was around this time that Genevieve and her children, including Belle, started passing as white.
Racism and Segregation in the US
This was the time of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), when the concept of “separate but equal” was established. Not only was segregation the rule of law, but the landmark case declared blackness was in the blood, not the skin tone. Known as the “one-drop” rule, it shaped American racism for the first half of the 20th century.
This is when Richard Greener drops out of the story. He was a proud black man, with one grandpa previously enslaved and the other a Spaniard from Puerto Rico. He seemingly disappeared from Belle’s life at this point, but I’d like to know what happened to him. Unfortunately, the exhibition doesn’t go into detail.
What the exhibition does a great job of is giving us the lay of the racist land that was the United States. It puts Belle’s decision to pass as white into a larger context, attempting to understand rather than criticize. To keep her secret, Belle didn’t comment on race in any of the surviving documentation, so the exhibition looks to her contemporaries for insight.
Racial Passing
Two areas of this section stood out to me. One was a screen playing short clips from the movies Veiled Aristocrats (1932) and Imitation of Life (1934). The clips go straight to the heart as they demonstrate the emotional anguish and family disruption caused by being mixed-race and crossing the color line.
The other was The Octoroon Girl, by Archibald Motley, Jr. The painting belongs to a three-part series depicting African American women based on racial classifications. The young woman in the painting is not given a name but is instead identified by her one-eighth blackness.
Rumors of Belle’s Race
Contrast The Octoroon Girl with Portrait of Belle da Costa Greene by Paul-César Helleu, where Belle looks unambiguously white. Throw in her photograph portraits by Theodore C. Marceau, and we can see how she transformed from Belle Marion Greener to the fashionable and formidable Belle da Costa Greene.
There’s one lingering question I have: did people believe Belle’s efforts to pass, or did they suspect her race all along? Could J. Pierpont Morgan really not know she was black, or did he know and just not care? (If so, kudos to him.) A possible answer comes later in the exhibit, in the form of her nephew, Robert “Bobbie” MacKenzie Leveridge, who committed suicide in 1943 because his fiancée Nina “Tess” Taylor was a heinous bitch.
Tess’s powerful and wealthy father likely discovered Bobbie’s mixed-race ancestry and was not happy about it. Tess wrote the breakup letter of all breakup letters to Bobbie, showing her true racist colors. One line is particularly gross but reveals that perhaps not everyone was fooled by Belle’s passing.
I shall quote a piece of conversation which I think you will agree it would be very unfortunate for any child of ours to overhear. “I consider it an insult to be invited to meet Morgan’s n***** whore.” Imagine having to say to little Mac, yes, that is your Aunt Belle, dear.1
Ugh, I hate this chick. Unfortunately, she was a dime a dozen back in the day, and many people held these horrible views. What Tess shows us, however, is that there were rumors of Belle’s race, and perhaps her connection to the Morgans protected her.
Education & Early Librarian Jobs
Given that Belle came from an educated, elite black family, her education started at home. She loved books as a child and decided to become a librarian at age 13. From 1896 to 1899, she attended the Northfield Seminary in Massachusetts. Her 1896 application stated she “would like to fit for Librarian.”
In 1900, she went to Amherst College’s Summer School of Library Economy. In 1901, Belle got her first gig as a librarian at Princeton, which was notoriously racist and segregated. Nevertheless, she was there for four years, honing her skills in librarianship. Most importantly, she made her first Morgan connection. Junius Spencer Morgan was Princeton’s Associate Librarian and the nephew of J. Pierpont Morgan. With his help, Belle found herself as J. Pierpont’s librarian in 1905.
Chapter One of the exhibition includes several of Belle’s major purchases for J. Pierpont, including the earliest existing manuscript for Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, 16 incunabula by William Caxton, and the Rembrandt etching, Christ Healing the Sick. When Morgan died in 1913, Belle was in a state of uncertainty as his son Jack figured out what to do with the library. Luckily, she served as his personal librarian until 1924, when she became director of the newly established Pierpont Morgan Library.
Belle & Bernard
The exhibition allows us to peel back the curtain on Belle’s love life. She never married but had an affair with art historian Bernard Berenson. He was married, but apparently his wife knew about the affair and didn’t care. Yeah…sure.
Anyhoo, Belle wrote about 600 letters to Bernard over four decades. The letters were lovey-dovey, but they also discussed art, books, and culture. Belle burned Bernard’s letters to her before her death, so alas, we will only ever see one side of their epic love story.
Chapter Two
Part two of the exhibition delves into Belle’s role as director of the newly established Pierpont Morgan Library, a public research institution. We’re treated to gorgeous manuscripts and artwork Belle acquired for both the library and her personal collection. We learn a bit more about her later family life, as well as black librarians who had a very different experience from Belle.
Director of the Morgan Library
Chapter Two begins with Belle’s iconic desk and ornate card catalog (any other librarians geeking out over the card catalog? No…just me then?) This display sets the scene for Belle’s work as director of the Pierpont Morgan Library. During her tenure, she acquired 138 illuminated manuscripts, 596 incunabula, and 17,000 reference works. She oversaw construction for the annex, which included an exhibition space and reading room. Belle also put on 46 exhibitions, released 35 publications, inaugurated a lecture series, and used the collection for hands-on learning. On top of all that, she ran a staff of librarians, who helped preserve and catalog the collections. Damn.
Illuminated Manuscripts Collection
Medieval illuminated manuscripts are where Belle shined. She built on J. Pierpont’s existing collection and continued to purchase under Jack. Her focus was Western Europe, but she branched out by collecting manuscripts from Persia, India, Armenia, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Check out some notable examples in the gallery below.
While Belle purchased manuscripts, she also curated exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1924 and the New York Public Library in 1933-1934. The Morgan became a scholarship hub for medievalists in the United States.
Literary & Historical Manuscripts
Belle was also proficient in collecting literary and historical manuscripts for the Morgan Library, some of which are on display in the exhibition. In addition to the earliest known manuscript of Poe’s The Raven, she acquired the draft of Honoré de Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, a letter from Anne Boleyn, Queen and wife of Henry VIII, and a drawing of Robespierre on his execution day by Jacques-Louis David.
Anne Boleyn, Queen, consort of Henry VIII, King of England, Letter to the dean and canons of Exeter Cathedral, March 26, 1536; Rembrandt van Rijn, Christ Healing the Sick (or “The Hundred Guilder Print”), ca. 1648, etching, engraving, and drypoint; Old Testament Miniature (“Crusader Bible”), in Latin, Persian, and Judeo-Persian, ca. 1244-54, Paris, France; Single Leaf from the Winchester Bible, in Latin, ca. 1160-80, Winchester, England; Gospels of Judith of Flanders, in Latin, 1051-64, England; Mirrour of the World, Westminster: William Caxton, 1481, after August 12.
Belle’s Personal Collection
Not only did Belle collect for the Morgan Library, but she also accumulated quite the treasure trove for herself. She was making bank as a librarian and amassed her own formidable collection. She bought Chinese sculpture, antique jewelry, old master paintings and prints, modern art, and of course, books. Our girl Belle had an Albrecht Dürer engraving, a Matisse drawing, a Northern Qi dynasty head of a Bodhisattva, and pages from a 14th-century Qur’an chillin’ in her apartment.
While her professional work focused on medieval studies, Belle hung out with bohemian and avant-garde artists in New York, particularly the Stieglitz Circle. Alfred Stieglitz was an art dealer and photographer who had friends like Gertrude and Leo Stein (writers), John Marin (abstract painter), Edward Steichen (photographer), and Marius de Zayas (artist). We glance into her life, attending fancy parties and seeing the latest modern art exhibitions. Interestingly, several of her artist friends were into African art and its influence on Western art. Belle, however, didn’t express much interest in African culture, likely because she was actively keeping her black ancestry a secret.
Black Librarianship
If Belle was a black woman passing as white and working as a special collections librarian for rich men, black librarians in the United States serve as a stark contrast. Black librarians faced great challenges as they advocated for access to books and learning in African American communities. Faced with restricted funding and constricting laws, they had to fight for their patrons’ rights. They also focused on collecting and preserving black literature, history, and culture. This endeavor was alien to Belle, who stayed away from African and African American artistic production. Figures such as Catherine Latimer, Dorothy Porter Wesley, and Vivian G. Harsh are given their due here.
Belle da Costa Greene’s Legacy
Belle da Costa Green: A Librarian’s Legacy fully illuminates the career and success of this badass librarian. She dominated librarianship and the rare books field. She also made her mark on medieval scholarship. Belle was named the Patron Saint of Medievalists of Color in 2018, a moniker she retains today. It’s even more fascinating that Belle was able to accomplish so much amid a very complicated personal life. From her love affair with Bernard Berenson, to her decision to pass as white, to personal tragedies like the death of her nephew Bobbie, Belle worked her ass off to ensure a legacy as an icon in librarianship.
Seeing the Exhibition
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy opened on October 25, 2024, and runs until May 4, 2025. The Morgan Library & Museum is located at 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016. Tickets are $25 for adults, $17 for seniors, $13 for students, and free for children 12 and under. The Morgan’s hours are:
- Tuesday – Thursday: 10:30 AM – 5:00 PM
- Friday: 10:30 AM – 8:00 PM
- Saturday – Sunday: 10:30 AM – 5:00 PM
If you can’t make it to NYC, check out the exhibition’s official webpage, which has a YouTube video, 3D tour, and selected images.
Learn More About Belle
To learn more about Belle da Costa Greene, check out the following publications. The first is the accompanying exhibition catalog, while the next two are biographies. The last two are novels. All links are Amazon affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no cost to you.
Footnotes
- Ciallela and Palmer, Belle, 273. ↩︎
Bibliography & Further Reading
Ciallela, Erica, and Philip S. Palmer, eds. Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy. DelMonico Books and The Morgan Library & Museum, 2024.
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