Videos

Crafting the Ballets Russes: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection

Robinson McClellan, Associate Curator of Music Manuscripts and Printed Music, discusses the importance of Robert Owen Lehman’s extraordinary collection of music manuscripts that has been an inspiration to scholars and visitors since it was placed on deposit at the Morgan Library & Museum.

Walton Ford: Birds and Beasts of the Studio

American artist Walton Ford and Jennifer Tonkovich, our Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints, discuss the artist’s current exhibition Walton Ford: Birds and Beasts of the Studio. Ford established his reputation in the 1990s with his monumental watercolor paintings of wild animals inspired by true or legendary stories of dramatic encounters between humankind and nature.

Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature

Curator Philip Palmer takes us through Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature and shares how the beloved children's book author rooted her fiction in the natural world.

Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality

Diane Wolfthal, David and Caroline Minter Chair Emerita in the Humanities and Professor Emerita of Art History, Rice University, and Dei Jackson, Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts here at the Morgan, discuss their current exhibition Medieval Money, Merchants, and Morality.

Spirit and Invention: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo

The Morgan is home to one of the world’s largest and most important collections of drawings by Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770) and his eldest son Domenico (1727–1804), with more than 300 representative examples of their lively invention and masterful techniques.

Morgan's Bibles: Splendor in Scripture

Jesse R. Erickson, Astor Curator of Printed Books & Bindings, and John Bidwell, Curator Emeritus, discuss the Bible as a cornerstone of religion, art, and literature in the western world.

Telling the Story of Belle da Costa Greene

To mark the 2024 centennial of its life as a public institution, the Morgan Library & Museum will present a major exhibition devoted to the life and career of its inaugural director, Belle da Costa Greene.

Treasures of New York: The Morgan Library & Museum

Located in the heart of New York City, The Morgan Library & Museum embraces creativity and expands knowledge. What was once the personal library of financier J.P. Morgan has become a museum and independent research library unlike any other.

Ferdinand Hodler: Drawings—Selections from the Musée Jenisch Vevey

Isabelle Dervaux, curator of Ferdinand Hodler: Drawings—Selections from the Musée Jenisch Vevey, discusses the artist’s legacy and his impact on modernism.

Bridget Riley Drawings: From the Artist's Studio

Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi

Our curator John Marciari discusses our current exhibition Sublime Ideas: Drawings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi which examines Giovanni Battista Piranesi as a versatile draftsman and his vigorous drawings.

Uncommon Denominator: Nina Katchadourian at the Morgan

In Uncommon Denominator, Nina Katchadourian (American, born 1968) stages a conversation among works from throughout her career, artifacts of her family’s history, and objects drawn from every corner of the Morgan’s vaults.

Georg Baselitz: Six Decades of Drawings

Isabelle Dervaux discusses one of the most celebrated contemporary German artists, Georg Baselitz. He gained international recognition in the 1960s for revitalizing figurative painting.

Ashley Bryan & Langston Hughes: Sail Away

Sal Robinson, our Lucy Ricciardi Assistant Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, discusses the artist Ashley Bryan and his 2015 book Sail Away, in which Bryan paired poems by Langston Hughes on the subject of water—oceans, seas, rivers, and rainstorms—with his own vibrant cut-paper collages.

Belle da Costa Greene and the Women of the Morgan

Erica Cialella, Belle da Costa Green Curatorial Fellow, and Philip Palmer, Robert H. Taylor Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, discuss Belle da Costa Greene’s enduring legacy and their ongoing research on her work as the director of the Morgan Library & Museum.

Writing a Chrysanthemum: The Drawings of Rick Barton

Very little is known about Rick Barton (1928–1992), who, between 1958 and 1962, created hundreds of drawings of striking originality. His subjects range from the intimacy of his room to the architecture of Mexican cathedrals, and from the gathering places of Beat-era San Francisco to the sinuous contours of plants.

PLEASE SEND TO REAL LIFE: Ray Johnson Photographs

A widely connected pioneer of Pop and mail art, Ray Johnson (1927–1995) was described as “New York’s most famous unknown artist.” Best known for his multimedia collages, he stopped exhibiting in 1991, but his output did not diminish.

J. Pierpont Morgan's Library: Building the Bookman's Paradise

With rarely seen architectural drawings, period photographs, and significant rare books and manuscripts from Morgan’s collection, this exhibition traces the design, construction, and early life of J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library.

One Hundred Years of James Joyce's Ulysses

Set on one day, 16 June 1904, James Joyce’s Ulysses follows the young poet Stephen Dedalus and the unlikely hero Leopold Bloom as they journey through Dublin. The groundbreaking novel links the epic to the ordinary, connecting characters and motifs from Homer’s ancient Greek poem the Odyssey with life in the Irish city that created Joyce.

Woody Guthrie: People Are the Song

The author of more than three thousand folk songs, Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) is one of the most influential songwriters and recording artists in American history.

Gwendolyn Brooks: A Poet’s Work In Community

This exhibition celebrates the life and work of American poet Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000). Though Brooks is generally well-known for her poetry, few recognize her expansive social and political impact.

Van Eyck to Mondrian: 300 Years of Collecting in Dresden

Building on the Morgan’s tradition of presenting to the American public distinguished works from outstanding institutions abroad, Van Eyck to Mondrian: 300 Years of Collecting in Dresden focuses on the exceptional drawing collection of the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden.

Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 800–1500

Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, ca. 800–1500, offers a sweeping overview of manuscript production in the Holy Roman Empire, one of the most impressive chapters in the history of medieval art.

Another Tradition: Drawings by Black Artists from the American South

A brown light brown tiger with dark brown stripes with a blue face to the left, a yellow face to the right and a pink face on top.

In 2018 the Morgan acquired eleven drawings from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, an organization dedicated to supporting Black Southern artists and their communities.

Shahzia Sikander: Extraordinary Realities

Pakistani American artist Shahzia Sikander is internationally celebrated for bringing Indo-Persian manuscript-painting traditions into dialogue with contemporary art practice. This exhibition, on view June 18 through September 26, 2021, tracks the first fifteen years of this artistic journey.

Architecture, Theater, and Fantasy: Bibiena Drawings from the Jules Fisher Collection

This exhibition, on view May 28 through September 12, 2021, is the first in the United States in over thirty years to celebrate these talented draftsmen and marks the promised gift to the Morgan of a group of Bibiena drawings from the collection of Jules Fisher, the Tony-winning lighting designer.

Bound for Versailles: Investigating the Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection

In anticipation of the upcoming exhibition Bound for Versailles: The Jayne Wrightsman Bookbindings Collection, on view June 25 through September 26, 2021, our conservators from the Thaw Conservation Center took a close look at techniques used in creating these elaborate works of art.

Conversations in Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection

This exhibition celebrates the remarkable collection of drawings assembled by the collecting couple Richard Gray, one of America’s foremost art dealers, and art historian Mary L. Gray.

New Accessions | Keats in NY

On the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of the English poet John Keats , a newly-acquired set of collectible tea cards sets the Pforzheimer Collection’s Charles Cuykendall Carter on a tour of special places for Keats in New York.

Poetry and Patronage: The Laubespine-Villeroy Library Rediscovered

Young, handsome, and highborn, Claude III de Laubespine lived in luxury after marrying an heiress and obtaining the favor of King Charles IX. His brilliant career at court was cut short in 1570, when he died at the age of 25. He left behind a splendid library, which was dispersed, and only recently have his books been identified and properly appreciated for their superb quality and fine bindings. Laubespine now ranks among the great collectors of the French Renaissance.