Penultimatum

AND

The origins and work of Bella da Costa Greene (1879-1950) are a subject of study in the United States. She was born in Washington as Belle Marion Greener, the daughter of Richard Greener, the first black graduate of Harvard University, and Genevieve Ida Fleet, also African-American.

When her parents divorced, Belle, her mother, and her siblings renounced their Blackness to appear as a white family in a time of extreme racism. They moved to New York and dropped the r from their last name. Belle replaced her middle name with da Costa to appear of Portuguese descent and thus justify her dark skin.

But Bella is one of the most brilliant librarians, museographers, and collectors in the history of our neighboring country. Her fame is due to her splendid work in creating the exceptional collection of books and manuscripts belonging to the financier J. Pierpont Morgan.

He hired her as his librarian in 1905. Upon his death in 1913, Greene continued his work with his son, who transformed his father's library into the institution that bears his name in 1924.

To recognize Bella's work, the Morgan Library is honoring her with an exhibition examining her life, the environment in which she worked, and the social circles she frequented. An expert in medieval illustrations and manuscripts, this recognition includes a selection of the Morgan's important acquisitions, some of them thanks to the celebrated librarian.

Highlights include the Crusades Bible; literary drafts by Honoré de Balzac and Edgar Allan Poe; and the only extant copy of Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, published in 1485.

Also, An Ethiopian Gospel made for Princess Zir Ganela; the engraving Melancholy I, by Albrecht Dürer; the Single Leaf from the Winchester Bible, from 1160; Commentary on the Apocalypse (Spain, year 945); the Gospels of Judith of Flanders; the watercolor Anteater, by Clara Tice; the oil painting Lady Walking in a Garden, by the Englishman Thomas Gainsborough (1788); the 1895 edition of the poems of William B. Yeats, and an 1896 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The work of librarians in Mexico still lacks the support and recognition it deserves.