2002-2003

February 12 through May 4, 2003

Picturing Natural History: Flora and Fauna in Drawings, Manuscripts, and Printed Books was The Morgan Library & Museum's first exhibition devoted to natural history illustration. It was also the Morgan's last before closing to the public for an extensive renovation and expansion program. The institution reopened to the public in spring 2006.

Image of Merian drawing
September 27, 2002, through January 19, 2003

The Thaw Collection is an exhibition of works that have been acquired by Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw since 1994. In the decades since the early 1950s, when they obtained their first drawing, a figure study by Giambattista Tiepolo, they have assembled one of the finest collections of drawings and watercolors in private hands. On the occasion of the first exhibition of their drawings at The Morgan Library & Museum in 1975, the Thaws announced their intention to eventually present the collection to the institution.

Image of exhibition banner
September 10 through December 15, 2002

As part of a commitment to build a representative collection of works on paper by twentieth-century artists, the Morgan acquired two major works by the American painter and draftsman Stuart Davis (1892–1964): his earliest known diary, used by the artist between 1920 and 1922, and a sketchbook dated 1926. To celebrate these acquisitions, the Morgan presented Stuart Davis: Art and Theory, 1920–31.

October 27 through December 29, 2002

The Walters Art Museum made the Middle Ages come alive for visitors with The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible. The Picture Bible—one of the greatest illuminated manuscripts produced in France during the thirteenth century—was disbound for conservation and study, offering visitors a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to view twenty-six of the book's pages in a single exhibition.

Image of Morgan Picture Bible page
June 25 through September 8, 2002

The market for children's books was an eighteenth-century innovation. By the last half of the nineteenth century, it was a major publishing enterprise. Efforts to educate greater portions of the populace and a growing middle class had fostered a larger reading public. Advancing technology had changed the appearance and availability of books. New illustrative and binding processes were often tested on books for children, giving them a glamour that dust jackets must provide today.

June 6 through September 8, 2002

David to Cézanne: Nineteenth-Century French Drawings was the Morgan's first large-scale exhibition of French nineteenth-century drawings from its holdings.

Image of Degas drawing
June 11 through September 1, 2002

Drawing on the Morgan Library's important collection of children's literature and a recently acquired collection of musical juvenilia, A Child's Garland of Songs: Music for and by Children comprised music manuscripts, printed songbooks, and pictures of young musicians.

February 14 through May 19, 2002

Examining the role of Pierre Matisse in promoting the work of twentieth-century artists in North America, The Morgan Library & Museum presented Pierre Matisse and His Artists. Pierre Matisse, the younger son of the French artist Henri Matisse and his wife Amélie, earned his own place in the art world as one of the most important dealers of modern and contemporary art.