The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible
March 6 through June 6, 2004
The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible used medieval works from the Morgan and The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, to explore ways in which Christian, Muslim, and Jewish cultures used storytelling to define themselves and their values. The Picture Bible—one of the greatest illuminated manuscripts produced in thirteenth-century France—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.
Picturing Natural History: Flora and Fauna in Drawings, Manuscripts, and Printed Books
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.
The Thaw Collection: Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, Acquisitions Since 1994
September 27, 2002, through January 19, 200
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.
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.
The Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library's Medieval Picture Bible
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.
Honor, Glory, Adventure: Books for Boys in the Age of Pierpont Morgan
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.
David to Cézanne: Nineteenth-Century French Drawings
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.
A Child's Garland of Songs: Music for and by Children
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.
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.
The brilliant and celebrated writer, dramatist, aesthete, wit, and self-proclaimed "lord of language" was the focus of Oscar Wilde: A Life in Six Acts, originally organized by the British Library. Wilde's (1854–1900) rise to success as a literary and social figure was meteoric. His decline to notoriety and disgrace was equally dramatic. Twelve years after publishing his first work of fiction, in 1888, he was dead at the age of forty-six, buried in a pauper's grave on the outskirts of Paris.
