New York’s Morgan Library & Museum was founded as a public institution in 1924 and its centenary this year has been celebrated in style. The most substantial project to form part of the anniversary is the exhibition (25th October–4th May 2025) on Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950), the museum’s inaugural Director. This is an exercise in fascinating institutional storytelling, but at the same time also considerably more, as Greene was an extraordinary and accomplished figure.

A pioneering historian of furniture and a curator at Karlsruhe and Munich, Georg Himmelheber was also a founder member of the Furniture History Society; although his expertise encompassed many periods and styles, he was perhaps best known for his work on ‘Biedermeier’ furniture.

Gustave Caillebotte (1848–94) was many things: a painter in the Impressionist circle, a patron of the arts, a flâneur in the modern city, a boat builder, a regatta sailor, a gardener and a philatelist, whose extensive collection now forms the basis of the stamp collection of the British Library, London. Coming from a wealthy family, he was long regarded primarily as a rich eccentric. That he was also a talented artist was discovered only decades after his death, partly because he kept most of his paintings to himself and chose not to exhibit them later in life.