Past Exhibitions

Seeds of Knowledge highlights the collection of 15th to 17th-century European printed herbals of Dr. Peter Goop (Liechtenstein). Herbals were highly illustrated, critical texts to doctors and lay healthcare providers that included both the folkloric and medicinal uses of plants.

Objects on view in J. Pierpont Morgan’s library reflect the past, present, and future of the collections in four curatorial departments, comprising illuminated manuscripts from the medieval and renaissance eras, five hundred years of printed books, correspondence and literary manuscripts, as well as printed music and autograph manuscripts by composers.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the practice of sketching outdoors with oil paint had become popular among landscape artists.

While exploring the volumes in her parents’ library, Karen Bassine Cohen discovered a passion for the nineteenth century.

The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates the gift of more than 130 drawings and photographs from the collection of Karen B. Cohen with the exhibition Into the Woods: Naturalism, Landscape, and Labor.

British artist Bridget Riley (b. 1931) is one of the most celebrated abstract painters of her generation. This exhibition—the first dedicated exclusively to her drawings in over fifty years—provides an intimate view of Riley's studio practice, in which the making of works on paper plays a central role.

A modern art pioneer, renowned Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) created works that range from vast symbolist compositions to intimate, realist portraits and nearly abstract landscape paintings.

Blaise Cendrars, born Frédéric Louis Sauser, was a catalyst in some of the explosive artistic innovations of the early twentieth century.

An exhibition in the Rotunda and an installation in the Garden in Summer 2023, developed collaboratively with the Lenape Center and Hudson Valley Farm Hub, honors Nora Thompson Dean (1907–1984), a Lenape teacher and herbalist who worked to preserve Lenape culture.

By the mid-eighteenth century, the Grand Tour, a study trip through Europe with a period of residence in Italy, had become a fixture in the education of European aristocrats and the training of artists.