L’histoire incroyable de Belle Greene, bibliothécaire de la Morgan Library. Rencontre avec l’écrivaine Alexandra Lapierre

Belle da Costa Greene (1879-1950), from 1906 librarian and advisor to the wealthy magnate and collector John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), then director of his library in New York, was celebrated in 2024 with the “Belle da Costa Greene A Librarian’s Legacy” exhibition highlighting the centenary of the opening of the Morgan Library to the public. In 2021, the French writer Alexandra Lapierre published the biography entitled “Belle Greene” (Paris, Flammarion), a work that presented to a wider audience the personality and the human and intellectual nature of this unconventional American black woman. The first part of this article reviews the main steps of Belle’s approach regarding the acquisitions of ancient illuminated manuscripts for the Morgan Library and focuses on her innovative vision of the world of the book. The second part centers on a long interview with Alexandra Lapierre who shares her own work methodology and delves into some specific aspects of Belle Greene’s life: her “Passing” in racist America between the nineteenth and the twentieth century and her passionate personal relationship with the great art historian Bernard Berenson.