Renzo Piano & the Morgan Library.(Architecture)

It is nearly impossible to convey to someone who has not been to New York's Morgan Library how splendid it is. Here is an experience comparable to that of the world's great museums, but without the walking. In a few superb rooms is a compact precis of western civilization itself: carved Babylonian cylinder seals along with drawings by Leonardo and Michelangelo, the ninth-century Lindau Gospels as well as musical scores scrawled in Beethoven's furioso hand. One normally encounters such treasures in a formidable institutional setting, uncertain whether one is admiring the power of the object or that of the collector. But while J. P. Morgan was indeed a collector of great ...