An Evening of Letter-Writing @ The Morgan Library
Bretty Rawson
On Friday, June 15, 2018, Handwritten curated an evening of letter-writing at The Morgan Library for their exhibit, The Magic of Handwriting.
We celebrated the energy of blank spaces, allowing characters of all kinds to surface. Over drinks in the lively Gilbert Court, we spilled our guts out to distant friends and family through letters & postcards. It was a joy to provide sheets of inspiration to those who joined, giving that gentle nudge toward creative connections. If you weren't able to join, or have yet to visit The Morgan Library, put this on your to-do list: The Magic of Handwriting: The Pedro Corrêa do Lago Collection is an exhibit you won't want to miss.
Below are a few windows into the evening. Thank you to The Morgan Library for inviting us in, and for providing a place to inch closer to each other. Stay tuned for upcoming opportunities, but in the meantime, and as always, keep the powerful pen busy.
About The Morgan Library's current exhibit, The Magic of Handwriting:
Handwriting works magic: it transports us back to defining moments in history, creativity, and everyday life and connects us intimately with the people who marked the page. For nearly half a century, Brazilian author and publisher Pedro Corrêa do Lago has been assembling one of the most comprehensive autograph collections of our age, acquiring thousands of handwritten letters, manuscripts, and musical compositions as well as inscribed photographs, drawings, and documents. This exhibition—the first to be drawn from his extraordinary collection—features some 140 items, including letters by Lucrezia Borgia, Vincent van Gogh, and Emily Dickinson, annotated sketches by Michelangelo, Jean Cocteau, and Charlie Chaplin, and manuscripts by Giacomo Puccini, Jorge Luis Borges, and Marcel Proust. Rather than focusing on a single figure, era, or subject, Corrêa do Lago made the ambitious decision to seek significant examples in six broad areas of human endeavor—art, history, literature, science, music, and entertainment—spanning nearly nine hundred years. From an 1153 document signed by four medieval popes to a 2006 thumbprint signature of physicist Stephen Hawking, the items on view convey the power of handwriting to connect us with writers, artists, composers, political figures, performers, explorers, scientists, philosophers, rebels, and others whose actions and creations have made them legends. See more at The Morgan Library's website here.