# The credit line names the collector, and the accession number tells you what happened > Morgan died in March 1913, and the Metropolitan credits him with gifts made in 1917. The credit line names the collector. The accession number records what actually happened. > The Study - 2026-09-27 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-credit-line-names-the-collector-not-the-donor/ ## Key points - J. Pierpont Morgan died on 31 March 1913, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art credits him as the donor of objects it received in 1917. We confirmed the credit lines directly from the museum's own collection API rather than from secondary accounts. - The 1917 gifts were made by his son, J. Pierpont Morgan Jr., who gave the largest portion of the collection. The credit line names the collector by museum convention, not the person who signed the deed. - One object in this archive was genuinely given by Morgan himself, in 1906, while he was president of the museum. Its credit line reads 1906 and its accession number and accession year both read 1907, so even the accurate case carries two different dates. - A fourth object sat in Morgan's estate from 1913 until the museum bought it in 1944, and its credit line reads Rogers Fund, 1944. His name is not on it at all, although he owned it longer than he owned some of the objects that carry his name. - The accession number is the field that records the transaction. A 17.190 number means the 1917 estate transfer, a 07.225 number the 1906 gift and 44.15 a purchase, and none of that is legible from the credit lines. ## Morgan died in 1913 and the museum has him giving things away in 1944 ## Two objects, one credit line, and a donor who was not there ## The one gift Morgan actually made, and it still carries two dates ## The outlier: an object the museum bought from the estate thirty-one years later ## Four objects, four transactions, two credit lines that look the same ## Why the accession number is the more honest field ## What a reader should do with a credit line ## Why this archive is free to read A credit line is a promise a museum made to somebody, kept in public for as long as the object exists, and it is worth exactly that. It is not a transaction record and it was never built to be one. These four objects show what happens when it is read as one: a dead man appears to make gifts, a purchase made from an estate erases an owner who held the thing for a lifetime and two identical strings conceal the difference between a gift a collector made himself and a gift his son made for him. The accession number carries the year and the group, quietly, in every case. Read that field first, and read the credit line for what it is, which is the name of somebody the museum decided to keep thanking. ## Questions **Why does the Metropolitan Museum credit gifts to J. Pierpont Morgan in 1917 when he died in 1913?** Because a gift completed by an estate is credited in the original collector's name by museum convention. Morgan died on 31 March 1913, his collection passed into his estate, and his son J. Pierpont Morgan Jr. gave the largest portion of it to the museum in 1917. The credit line honours the collector rather than recording who signed the deed. **What does a credit line actually tell you?** Who the museum is thanking, and in what year the donor's act is dated. It is a dedication with a permanent fixed form, not a transaction record, so it can name a person who was dead when the object arrived and it can differ by a year or more from the date the museum took the object in. **What does the accession number 17.190.987 mean?** At the Metropolitan the first component is the accession year, so 17 is 1917. The 190 identifies the group, in this case the 1917 transfer of the Morgan collection, and the final number is the individual object. Consecutive numbers within a group mark objects that arrived together. **Did any object in this group come to the museum while Morgan was alive?** Yes. Morgan bought the entire Hoentschel collection under a contract dated 27 April 1906, while he was president of the museum, and gave it himself. An armchair from Louis XVI's Salon des Jeux at Saint Cloud came in that purchase, credited Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1906, with the accession number 07.225.107 and an accession year of 1907. **Why does one object Morgan owned carry no reference to him at all?** Because the museum bought it rather than receiving it. A brass ewer from Khurasan or Herat stayed in Morgan's estate from his death in 1913 until the museum purchased it in 1944, so its credit line reads Rogers Fund, 1944. His ownership appears only in the provenance. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 447002, mosque lamp bearing the name of al-Malik al-Nasir: accession 17.190.987, accession year 1917, credit line 'Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917'. Read directly. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 193606, Emmoser celestial globe with clockwork: accession 17.190.636, accession year 1917, credit line 'Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917'. Read directly. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 189387, armchair from Louis XVI's Salon des Jeux at Saint Cloud: accession 07.225.107, accession year 1907, credit line 'Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1906'. Read directly. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 450513, ewer from Khurasan or Herat: accession 44.15, accession year 1944, credit line 'Rogers Fund, 1944'. Read directly. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page for the mosque lamp, with the museum's own provenance line recording the Mannheim estate sale of 1910 and the passage through Morgan's estate. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page for the ewer, object 450513, with the provenance line recording the estate from 1913 to the museum's purchase in 1944. - [7] Metropolitan Museum of Art, 'The Museum, ca. 1913', on Morgan's role as president and the scale of the collection that reached the museum after his death. - [8] Bard Graduate Center, 'The Hoentschel Collection Comes to the Metropolitan', on the April 1906 purchase through George Durlacher and the founding of the museum's decorative arts department. - [9] The Magazine Antiques, 'Georges Hoentschel and his world', on the collection Morgan bought entire in 1906. - [10] Metropolitan Museum of Art, press release for 'The Making of a Collection: Islamic Art at the Metropolitan', on the group of Mamluk mosque lamps that entered with the 1917 Morgan material.