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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.

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.

Objects on view in J. Pierpont Morgan’s library reflect the past, present, and future of building 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.