Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Franz Kafka

November 22, 2024 through April 13, 2025

When Franz Kafka died of tuberculosis at the age of forty, in 1924, few could have predicted the influence his relatively small body of work would have on every realm of thought and creative endeavor over the course of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. This exhibition will present, for the first time in the United States, the Bodleian Library’s extraordinary holdings of literary manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and photographs related to Kafka, including the original manuscript of his novella The Metamorphosis. Other highlights include the manuscripts of his novels Amerika and The Castle; letters and postcards addressed to his favorite sister, Ottla; his personal diaries, in which he also composed fiction, including his literary breakthrough, the 1912 story “The Judgment”; and unique items such as his drawings, the notebooks he used when studying Hebrew, and family photographs.

In addition to presenting unique literary and biographical material, the exhibition examines Kafka’s afterlife, from the complex journeys of his manuscripts, to the posthumous creation of a literary icon whose very name has become an adjective, to his immense influence on the worlds of literature, theater, dance, film, and the visual arts. Drawing on institutional holdings and private collections in the United States and Europe, the Morgan will show a selection of key works, among them Andy Warhol’s portrait of Kafka, part of his 1980 series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century.

Inspired by Franz Kafka, the Morgan is hosting a creative writing contest for teens.

Franz Kafka is organized by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford in collaboration with the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. The exhibition curator at the Morgan is Sal Robinson, Lucy Ricciardi Assistant Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts

Franz Kafka is made possible with generous support from Frederick J. Iseman. Major support is provided by the Drue and H.J. Heinz II Charitable Trusts, Alyce Williams Toonk, and the Sherman Fairchild Fund for Exhibitions.

Franz Kafka, Altstädter Ring, Prague. © Archiv Klaus Wagenbach.

Publication

Selected Images

Franz Kafka, Altstädter Ring, Prague. © Archiv Klaus Wagenbach.

Andy Warhol, Franz Kafka, 1980
Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
© The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York

Das Schloss (The Castle)
Autograph manuscript, 1922
Bodleian Libraries; MS. Kafka 34, fol.25r
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Postcard to Josef David, Matliary, March 4, 1921
MS. Kafka 50, fol. 4
Jointly owned by the Bodleian Library and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Postcard to Josef David, Matliary, March 4, 1921
MS. Kafka 50, fol. 4
Jointly owned by the Bodleian Library and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

 

Diary, May–September 1912
MS. Kafka 6, fol. 27r
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Postcard to Ottla Kafka, Schelesen (Želízy), December 1918
MS. Kafka 49, fol. 79r
Jointly owned by the Bodleian Library and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Postcard to Ottla Kafka from Versailles (September 13, 1911)
MS. Kafka 49, fol. 12v
Jointly owned by the Bodleian Library and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Unknown photographer
Franz Kafka, ca. 1906
MS. Kafka 55, fol. 4r
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Unknown photographer
Franz and Ottla Kafka, Zürau, 1917
MS. Kafka 55, fol. 7r
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Philip Roth (1933–2018)
“‘I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting’; or, Looking at Kafka”
Annotated page from galleys of Reading Myself and Others
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [ca. 1975]
The Morgan Library & Museum, Carter Burden Collection, PML 182179.
Copyright © Philip Roth, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.

Der Heizer (The Stoker)
Illustrated by Elisabeth Siefer
Mexico City, 1985
Private Collection, Photography courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum

Larissa Theule
Kafka and the Doll
Illustrated by Rebecca Green (b. 1986)
New York: Viking, 2021
Bodleian Libraries
Penguin Random House LLC; Artwork © Rebecca Green

Rebecca Green (b. 1986)
Original artwork from Kafka and the Doll, 2019
Watercolor and pen and ink
Courtesy the artist © Rebecca Green

Gallery Images