Search

Bringing together more than 160 works on paper by such iconic artists as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, and Joan Miró, this is the first major exhibition to explore the central role of drawing in surrealism, one of the most important movements in twentieth-century art.

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.

Delirium: The Art of the Symbolist Book explores creative encounters between Symbolist authors and the artists in their circles.

In 2009 when the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon unveiled a previously unknown portrait painting with strong claims to be the only surviving life-time portrait of William Shakespeare, it created an international sensation.

This exhibition presents some of the Morgan’s greatest portrait drawings from a collection of works on paper that is internationally recognized for its depth and quality.

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, literary manuscripts and correspondence, as well as printed music and autograph manuscripts by composers.

Comprising fifty-eight examples in manuscript or printed editions, Painted Prayers: Medieval and Renaissance Books of Hours from the Morgan Library examined the tremendous popularity of Books of Hours through an exploration of their customary prayers and the beautiful pictures that traditionally accompany these texts.

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.

Victorian Bestsellers explored the rise of this cultural phenomenon using original manuscripts, first editions, illustrated editions, and rare printed ephemera, drawn largely from the Morgan's renowned literary collections.

Approximately 100 manuscripts, letters, rare printed documents, objects, maps, and published writings—drawn primarily from the collections of the Morgan; the Gilder Lehrman Collection, on deposit at the Morgan; and the Huntington Library—were included.