We thought we’d revisit an episode we recorded earlier this year about one of the more fascinating and under-known figures in American art history. Her name was Belle da Costa Greene, and she was the vivacious and spectacularly connoisseurial force behind building robber baron J.P. Morgan’s art collection and, now, New York’s Morgan Library. Unusual at the time for being a women in such a powerful role, what is even more unusual is that she was a Black woman—a secret she successfully guarded her entire adult life.To learn Belle da Costa Greene’s story—which is now being made into a major TV series—I spoke to Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, the authors of The Personal Librarian, a sensational novel about her life.
