ABSTRACT This exhibit review examines Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy , presented at the Morgan Library & Museum from October 25, 2024, to May 4, 2025. Through a combination of personal reflection and critical analysis, the review explores how the exhibition reconstructs the life and professional influence of Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan's first librarian and later director. The article considers Greene's transformative role in shaping the Morgan's rare book and manuscript collections while also addressing the complexities of her self‐fashioned identity as a Black woman passing as White within elite cultural institutions of the early twentieth century. Particular attention is given to the exhibition's curatorial strategies, including the arrangement of rare materials, photographs, and interpretive texts that position Greene simultaneously as scholar, collector, cultural mediator, and public intellectual. By engaging both the emotional experience of viewing the exhibition and the institutional narratives embedded within it, the review evaluates how the exhibit frames Greene's legacy in relation to librarianship, race, gender, and cultural authority. Ultimately, the article argues that the exhibition not only commemorates Greene's bibliographic achievements but also invites contemporary audiences to reconsider the historical labor, personal negotiation, and intellectual vision behind the construction of major cultural collections.
Kimberly F. Monroe (Tue,) studied this question.