The full schedule of exhibitions for the centennial year culminates with a special exhibition taking a closer look at the Morgan’s first director, Belle da Costa Greene. Other highlights include:
* Seen Together: Acquisitions in Photography - January 26 through May 26, 2024
A showcase of more than 40 previously unexhibited works acquired by the Morgan’s Department of Photography since its founding in 2012 with 18 photographs of prominent figures from many creative disciplines, including Marianne Moore and Jack Kerouac
* Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature - February 23 through June 9, 2024
Children’s book author and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) rooted her fiction in the natural world. Drawn to Nature brings together artwork, books, manuscripts, and artifacts from several institutions in the United Kingdom, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Trust, and the Armitt Museum and Library. Paired with the Morgan’s exceptional collection of her picture letters, these objects trace how Potter’s innovative blend of scientific observation and imaginative storytelling shaped some of the world’s most popular children’s books.
* Crafting the Ballets Russes: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection - June 28 through September 22, 2024
Robert Owen Lehman’s extraordinary collection of music manuscripts has been an inspiration to scholars and visitors since it was placed on deposit at the Morgan Library & Museum. Among its many splendid works are deep holdings of early 20th century ballet, including Igor Stravinsky’s Firebird (1910), Petrouchka (1911), and Les Noces (1923); Claude Debussy’s L’aprés-midi d’un Faune (1912); and Maurice Ravel’s Bolero (1928) and La Valse (1920). At the core of the exhibition is the creative process that brought these ballets to life. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue address the sketches, drafts, and working copies of the composers, choreographers, and designers, capturing the ways in which they imagined, conceived, and collaborated to kindle works of astonishing originality and ongoing influence.
* Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy - October 25, 2024 through May 4, 2025
A major exhibition devoted to the life and career of inaugural director, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950). Widely recognized as an authority on illuminated manuscripts and deeply respected as a cultural heritage executive, Greene is one of the most prominent librarians in American history.
* Franz Kafka - November 22, 2024 through April 13, 2025
This exhibition will present, for the first time in the United States, the Bodleian Library’s extraordinary holdings of literary manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and photographs related to Kafka, including the original manuscript of his novella The Metamorphosis. Other highlights include the manuscripts of his novels Amerika and The Castle; letters and postcards addressed to his favorite sister, Ottla; his personal diaries, in which he also composed fiction, including his literary breakthrough, the 1912 story The Judgment; and unique items such as his drawings, the notebooks he used when studying Hebrew, and the slips of paper on which he wrote messages in his final days, when the progression of his illness meant that he could no longer speak.
In addition to presenting unique literary and biographical material, the exhibition examines Kafka’s afterlife, from the complex journeys of his manuscripts, to the posthumous creation of a literary icon whose very name has become an adjective, to his immense influence on the worlds of literature, theater, dance, film, and the visual arts.
