Greene became the Morgan’s first director in 1924, when J. P. Morgan, Jr., established the library as a public institution. Before the Morgan’s gallery space was completed in 1926, Greene and her staff mounted exhibitions at the New York Public Library, for whom Mr. Morgan served as a trustee and Vice President. Following a successful NYPL exhibition of the Morgan’s American historical manuscripts in the spring of 1924, Original Manuscripts and Drawings of English Authors from the Pierpont Morgan Library opened in December 1924 and closed the following April, attracting around 180,000 visitors to see over 300 collection items—at the time the largest exhibition of manuscripts in American history. Belle Greene put on view twenty-seven objects by or related to Keats, one of the best-represented authors on display, and included nearly every Keats artifact from the present exhibition. A catalogue of the exhibition was printed privately but also reprinted in the New York Library Bulletin of March 1925.
Edmund Lester Pearson, “The Morgan Manuscripts,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, Volume 29, Number 3 (1925). Ref 913 P3. Morgan Library Reference Collection.