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The Morgan Library & Museum Once the private library of financier J. Today it is a museum, independent research library, music venue, architectural landmark, and historic site.
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Pierpont Morgan—now a museum, research library, architectural landmark, and historic site in the heart of New York City. The Morgan Library & Museum began as the private library of financier Pierpont Morgan, one of the preeminent collectors and cultural benefactors in the United States. A century after its founding, the Morgan maintains a unique position in the cultural life of New York City and is considered one of its greatest treasures.

On this day in 1854, Oscar Wilde was born. Author, poet, and q***r icon, Wilde remains one of the most celebrated litera...
10/16/2026

On this day in 1854, Oscar Wilde was born. Author, poet, and q***r icon, Wilde remains one of the most celebrated literary figures of the 19th century.

One of the Morgan’s great literary treasures is the earliest surviving manuscript of "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which formed the basis for the novel’s first printed edition. The manuscript reveals Wilde’s extensive revisions as he shaped his only novel, including changes to the characters, narration, and ho******ic exchanges between Dorian, Basil Hallward, and Lord Henry Wotton.

It also preserves the novel’s original closing lines, in which a “dead body” lies on the floor “with a knife in its heart.” The manuscript entered the Morgan’s collection in 1913, acquired from collector and financier Eugene Meyer Jr. for $2,500.

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Oscar Wilde (1854-1900). The picture of Dorian Gray: autograph manuscript signed. From the Louis I. Haber (sale, Dec. 8, 1909, lot 1776) and Eugene Meyer, Jr. collections. MA 883

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[morgan library and museum, new york city museum, gothic novel, victorian writer, lgbtq history, spooky season]

10/15/2026

Last chance to see "Hujar:Contact!"

This once in a lifetime exhibition closes Sunday, October 25! "Hujar:Contact" offers an unprecedented look into the life, times, and creative evolution of a master photographer. The exhibition features more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s Peter Hujar Collection, which includes over 5,700 contact sheets from throughout the artist’s career.

When you think of Christo (1935–2020), you might picture monuments and landscapes transformed into temporary, site-speci...
10/14/2026

When you think of Christo (1935–2020), you might picture monuments and landscapes transformed into temporary, site-specific works of art. But these iconic projects represent only part of a rich artistic legacy.

A group of drawings recently donated to the Morgan Library & Museum by the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation offers an intimate view into Christo's formative period at Sofia's Academy of Fine Arts, revealing his remarkable craftsmanship and gift for close observation.

This body of work offers a less familiar perspective on the artist and new insight into ideas that would resonate throughout his career. Read this blog post by Esther Levy, Curatorial Assistant in the Morgan’s Modern and Contemporary Drawings Department, to learn more about these extraordinary drawings: https://www.themorgan.org/blog/new-acquisition-early-christo-drawings

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Image 1: Untitled (Portrait of a Farmer) [drawing], undated, recto, 2026.140
Image 2: Plovdiv Factory [drawing], 1951, recto, 2026.143
Image 3: Untitled (Portrait of a Man with Hat) [drawing], undated, recto, 2026.139
Image 4: Storefront (Project) [drawing], 1964, recto, 2026.149

All images by Christo (1935-2020). Collection of The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation. © 2026 Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation. Photography by Charles Roussel

Larry Rivers’s portrait of John Ashbery is an early example of his loose, energetic drawing style. Created around 1950, ...
10/13/2026

Larry Rivers’s portrait of John Ashbery is an early example of his loose, energetic drawing style. Created around 1950, the figure is built up through repeated marks, erasures, and smudges, leaving traces of this subtractive process on the surface.

Rivers, who began his career as a jazz saxophonist before turning to painting, carried a similar sense of rhythm and improvisation into his visual work.

He met Ashbery in 1949, alongside writers including Frank O’Hara and Kenneth Koch, and his work soon began to reflect the formal influence of their poetry. In 1962, Ashbery described Rivers as a “baroque artist,” pointing to his tendency to build up and break down an image at once. Through drawing and redrawing, Rivers reduces detail to its essentials, bringing the subject into focus through what remains.


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Larry Rivers
The Bronx 1925–2002, Southampton, NY
Untitled (Portrait of John Ashbery), ca. 1950
Graphite
Gift of David K. Kermani, from the Collection of John Ashbery
[Morgan library & museum, Ashbery, New york school poetry, Visual art, Contemporary art]

Rachel Martin is an artist whose drawings blend traditional Indigenous symbols with contemporary motifs that reflect her...
10/12/2026

Rachel Martin is an artist whose drawings blend traditional Indigenous symbols with contemporary motifs that reflect her lived experience.

An enrolled Tlingit member, Martin incorporates Northwest Coast formline drawing into her visual language. While adhering to precise formline technique of continuous swelling and tapering lines, Martin embraces the imperfection of drawing by hand and allows for a greater degree of freedom in her mark-making. The figure in this drawing wears a Chilkat robe, most commonly worn by high-ranking tribal members on ceremonial occasions such as dances and community celebrations. The wearer intentionally sports the robe in a sideways and backwards manner to indicate status. The robe's woven pattern shows a matriarchal figure with long nails, a reference to the matrilineal society from which the Tlingits originate, while features such as the extended tongue and contemporary sneakers demonstrate Martin's signature sense of humor. In this way, Martin explores the complexities of carrying ancient traditions into a modern context.


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Rachel Martin, "She's a 10 but she boils herring eggs until they're all white and rubbery [drawing]", 2024. Archival colored pencil on archival paper.
The Morgan Library & Museum, 2025.70

Coming soon! "Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks" opens November 6, 2026!This exhibition highlights th...
10/09/2026

Coming soon! "Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks" opens November 6, 2026!

This exhibition highlights the short period in European book history (1450–80) when blockbooks competed with hand-written and typographically-printed books as commercial products for readers.

Blockbooks, now often referred to as “medieval graphic novels,” were highly illustrated books printed entirely from woodcuts (text and image together). As such, they were the first print-on-demand books in the West. While some works maintained texts and imagery popular from manuscript tradition, block cutters and printers also produced new and innovative texts specifically designed for the medium. Ultimately, the cumbersome production process of woodcut-book printing was surpassed by the greater capabilities of typographic printing that integrated woodcuts, and the blockbook genre had largely died out by 1480. This thirty-year span, however, reveals a critical moment in European book history as the increasing demand for books led to inventions and experimentation in book production.

The Morgan holds the largest collection of blockbooks in the United States. A highlight of this exhibition will be the Ars moriendi blockbook, a rare copy printed in the Netherlands about 1467–69. In 2022, the Morgan acquired fifteen leaves of this blockbook that had been held in a private collection. Remarkably, the Morgan already possessed the remaining nine leaves—purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1902. This acquisition reunites the two parts, forming the only known complete copy of this monument to early European printing.
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Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks is made possible by generous support from the T. Kimball Brooker Foundation, the Lucy Ricciardi Family Exhibition Fund, Joshua W. Sommer, Mr. G. Scott Clemons and Ms. Karyn Joaquino, Susan and Eugene Flamm, and the Drue Heinz Exhibitions and Programs Fund.
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Ars moriendi (Blockbook). Netherlands (or Lower Rhine), approximately 1467–1469. The Morgan Library & Museum, PML 198786.

On a few occasions Fran Lebowitz invited Peter Hujar and Vince Aletti to visit her family home in Morristown, New Jersey...
10/07/2026

On a few occasions Fran Lebowitz invited Peter Hujar and Vince Aletti to visit her family home in Morristown, New Jersey, and the three of them stayed overnight. Once, Hujar photographed each of his friends in the beds where they had spent the previous night, Aletti in Fran’s bedroom and Fran in her sister’s. The diaristic nature of the exposures looks ahead to the work of Nan Goldin, which Hujar would point to in the 1980s as a compelling next stage in the medium’s evolution.
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Vince Aletti and Fran Lebowitz, Morristown, New Jersey, 1974, job 622. The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, 2013.108:8.2114. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York; © The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS).
[morgan library and museum, research library, photography, Peter Hujar, New york city museum, morgan library and museum, east village, new york city photographer, portrait photography, new york city museum]

During the early years of his friendship with John Ashbery, Jean Hélion became deeply interested in portraiture. In 1959...
10/06/2026

During the early years of his friendship with John Ashbery, Jean Hélion became deeply interested in portraiture. In 1959, Ashbery wrote in ARTnews that Hélion often painted multiple portraits of the same person "in a variety of ways and mediums" to capture their personality.

"Portrait of JA" belongs to a group of works Hélion made in early 1964, when, as he recorded in his journal, he became obsessed with painting heads and frequently asked friends to pose for him. The work may have been intended as a study for a painting, but no finished version is known, perhaps because Ashbery left Paris permanently for New York in 1965.
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Jean Hélion (1904–1987). Portrait of JA, ca. 1965. Crayon, pastel, gouache, and ink on dark brown paper, 19 × 25 in. Inscribed: A John A. / son ami fidèle / Hélion. The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of David K. Kermani, from the Collection of John Ashbery, 2019.161. © 2026 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photography by Carmen González Fraile

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[New york city museum, morgan library and museum, john ashbery, Jean Hélion, ARTNews, portraiture, painting]

10/04/2026

A warm welcome to all our new followers! 👋 Allow us to introduce ourselves. Get to know the Morgan Library & Museum and discover what we’re all about in this video!

In 1984, Peter Hujar photographed artist Kiki Smith during a formative period in her early artistic career. Her eyes dom...
10/02/2026

In 1984, Peter Hujar photographed artist Kiki Smith during a formative period in her early artistic career. Her eyes dominate Hujar’s portraits of her, in which he uses a softened version of the chiaroscuro lighting technique he had developed several years earlier.
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Kiki Smith, 189 Second Avenue, 1984, job 1052
The Morgan Library & Museum, Peter Hujar Collection, New York, purchased on the Charina Endowment Fund, 2013, 2013.108:8.4825. Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Ortuzar, New York; © The Peter Hujar Archive / Artists Rights Society (ARS).
[morgan library and museum, research library, photography, Peter Hujar, New york city museum, morgan library and museum, Kiki Smith, east village, new york city photographer, portrait photography, new york city museum]

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