News & Events

By Edward Roth­stein
Pub­lished: Novem­ber 1, 2012
The New York Times, Art & Design Section

It was such a long time ago; and in another world,” Beat­rix Pot­ter writes, in a hand­writ­ing not all that dif­fer­ent from the one she used in 1893, when she wrote a let­ter to a 5-year-old acquain­tance about four lit­tle rab­bits named Flopsy, Mopsy, Cot­ton­tail and Peter. But in this 1940 doc­u­ment about the ori­gins of Peter Rab­bit — shown in a sug­ges­tive, engross­ing new exhi­bi­tion at the Mor­gan Library & Museum, “Beat­rix Pot­ter: The Pic­ture Let­ters” — she admits to being puz­zled: “I never quite under­stood the secret of Peter’s peren­nial charm.”

But some­thing hap­pens as you work your way through this exhi­bi­tion, look­ing at Potter’s images and read­ing her hand­writ­ing. The cura­tor, John Bid­well, has gath­ered 22 illus­trated let­ters that Pot­ter wrote to chil­dren dur­ing her most cre­ative years along with man­u­scripts, art­work and children’s toys, draw­ing from the Morgan’s col­lec­tion, var­i­ous pri­vate hold­ings, the Vic­to­ria and Albert Museum in Lon­don and the Cot­sen Children’s Library at Prince­ton.  Read more.