WANAFOTO: Morgan Library & Museum

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04/07/25

Renoir Drawings @ The Morgan, NYC - Exhibition of drawings, watercolors, and pastels of the French Master of Impressionism

Renoir Drawings

Morgan Library & Museum, New York

October 17, 2025 - February 8, 2026

Auguste Renoir (French, 1841–1919)

Portrait of a Girl (Elisabeth Maître), 1879

Pastel on Ingres paper

The Albertina Museum, Vienna – The Batliner Collection, DL535

While the paintings of Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) have become icons of Impressionism, his drawings, watercolors, and pastels are far less widely known. In fact, drawing remained central to his artistic practice even as his interests and ambitions changed over the course of a long career. This exhibition explores the ways in which Auguste Renoir used paper to test ideas, plan compositions, and interpret both landscape and the human figure.

Thematic sections cover the full span of the artist’s career, ranging from academic studies he made as a student, to on-the-spot impressions of contemporary urban and rural life, to finished, formal portraits, to intimate sketches of friends and family completed late in life. In-depth case studies of favored themes and preparatory work for landmark canvases further illuminate Renoir’s practice of drawing.

Inspired by the major gift to the Morgan of a large-scale preparatory sketch for one of Renoir’s most significant paintings, The Great Bathers, this exhibition is the first in a century to explore the artist’s works on paper in depth. Organized by the Morgan Library Museum and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Renoir Drawings brings together nearly one hundred drawings, pastels, watercolors, prints, and a small selection of paintings, enabling visitors to engage with Renoir’s creative process while offering insights into his artistic methods over five decades.

Organized by Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director, and Sarah Lees, Research Associate.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM

225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016

www.themorgan.org

11/03/25

Franz Kafka - Exhibition @ Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Franz Kafka

Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Through April 13, 2025

Franz Kafka, ca. 1906

Unknown photographer

MS. Kafka 55, fol. 4r

Franz Kafka, Altstädter Ring, Prague

Franz Kafka

Postcard to Ottla Kafka, Schelesen (Želízy), December 1918

MS. Kafka 49, fol. 79r

Jointly owned by the Bodleian Library and the

Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach

The Morgan Library & Museum presents Franz Kafka, on view through April 13, 2025, marking the 100th anniversary of the author’s death. The exhibition celebrates Kafka’s achievements, creativity, and continued influence on new literary, theatrical, and artistic creations around the world. Franz Kafka is presented in collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, whose extraordinary Kafka holdings appear in the United States for the first time. The items on view include literary manuscripts, correspondence, diaries, and photographs, including the original manuscript of his novella The Metamorphosis.

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. Kafka’s novels and short stories have had an immense influence on literature, art, and culture in the United States in particular, and visitors to the Morgan can experience important items from the Bodleian’s Kafka archive in the place where his work has made an outsize impact. The exhibition not only sets Kafka in the context of his times but also shows how his own experiences nourished his imagination, taking visitors on a journey through his life and influences—from his relationship with his family and the people closest to him to the places where he lived and worked, through to his last years of illness and his death.

Highlights from the exhibition include the manuscripts of Kafka’s novels Amerika and The Castle; manuscripts of his major stories “A Hunger Artist” and “Josephine the Singer;” 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 family photographs. Drawing on institutional holdings and private collections in the United States and Europe, the Morgan will show a selection of key works, among them Andy Warhol’s portrait of Kafka, part of his 1980 series Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, and Vladimir Nabokov’s copy of The Metamorphosis.

Kafka’s best-known work, The Metamorphosis, is a central focus of the exhibition. Alongside the original manuscript of the novella, the exhibition includes entomological illustrations that explore the possibilities of what the creature that used to be Gregor Samsa might have looked like, as well as modern reinterpretations of the story.

Franz Kafka, Der Heizer (The Stoker)

Illustrated by Elisabeth Siefer

Mexico City, 1985

Private Collection

Photography by Carmen González Fraile

courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum

Larissa Theule, Kafka and the Doll

Illustrated by Rebecca Green (b. 1986)

New York: Viking, 2021

Bodleian Libraries

Penguin Random House LLC;

Artwork © Rebecca Green

Rebecca Green (b. 1986)

Original artwork from Kafka and the Doll, 2019

Watercolor and pen and ink

Rebecca Green (b. 1986)

Original artwork from Kafka and the Doll, 2019

Private Collection

Photography by Carmen González Fraile,

courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum

The exhibition also examines how the afterlives of Kafka’s work have continued to reach across the world, and their particularly deep resonance in the United States. His influence and impact on the literary world and beyond is well-represented by Andy Warhol’s iconic painting Franz Kafka (1980). The exhibition showcases how the author’s work were created into numerous languages and artistic responses in a variety of formats, with a particular focus on Asia and the modern-day interest in Kafka in Korea and Japan. Kafka’s influence on American arts and culture is represented by an annotated galley proof of Philip Roth’s essay “‘I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting’; or, Looking at Kafka” from the Morgan’s collection.

To complete the picture of Kafka’s world, the exhibition dives into the author’s travels, both real and imaginary. We see in his notebooks and journals how his travels in Western Europe enabled him to practice descriptive writing, while his readings of travel narratives and poetry in translation strengthened his fascination with remote spaces and informed his subtle fictional critiques of European colonialism.

This exhibition is organized by the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, in collaboration with the Morgan Library & Museum, New York. Franz Kafka at the Morgan is organized by Sal Robinson, Lucy Ricciardi Assistant Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts.

MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM

225 Madison Avenue, New York City

www.themorgan.org

Franz Kafka @ Morgan Library & Museum

November 22, 2024 - April 13, 2025

27/04/08

Philip Guston: Works on Paper, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Philip Guston: Works on Paper

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York

May 2 - August 31, 2008

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1950

Ink on parchment paper, 47.6 x 60.3 cm (18 ¾ x 23 ¾ in)

Private Collection

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Sara Wells, New York

Philip Guston

Drawing Related to Zone (Drawing No. 19), 1954

Ink on paper, 44.5 x 59.1 cm (17 ½ x 23 ¼ in)

Private Collection

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Michael Korol, New York

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1958

Ink on paper, 43.2 x 56.6 cm (17 x 22 ¼ in)

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Philip Guston

Celebration, 1961

Ink on paper, 65.4 x 77.5 cm (25 ¾ x 30 ½ in)

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Sara Wells, New York

“It is the nakedness of drawing that I like. The act of drawing is what locates, suggests, discovers. . .”
⎯ Philip Guston

The extraordinary drawings of Philip Guston (1913–1980) are the subject of a major exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum. Together with Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston is recognized as one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century. The exhibition marks the first retrospective of his drawings in twenty years and the Morgan is the only American venue.

Organized by the KunstMuseum Bonn, and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung Munich, in cooperation with the artist’s estate, Philip Guston: Works on Paper examines the importance of drawing throughout key periods of Guston’s career, from the mid-1940s to 1980. While the artist is primarily known for his paintings, his drawings occupy a special place in his oeuvre as they influenced new phases of creativity and served to articulate radically different approaches.

The Morgan Library & Museum’s presentation of the exhibition features more than one-hundred drawings, including many rarely seen works that were left in the artist’s studio after his death as well as major loans from museums and private collections.

“The Morgan Library & Museum is thrilled to be the only American venue for this outstanding exhibition,” said Morgan director William M. Griswold. “This is one of the Morgan’s first exhibitions devoted to a twentieth-century artist and Guston is one of the greats of the modern era. This show demonstrates the amazing range and versatility of his work. It is truly remarkable to see so many of his drawings together in one show.”

Philip Guston was a prolific draftsman who often turned to drawing to explore new directions in his art before applying them to painting. Several times during the course of his career he stopped painting altogether to concentrate on drawing. Such phases mark the dramatic changes that characterized Philip Guston’s art from figuration to abstraction and vice versa.

“Philip Guston’s work expresses the tensions and conflicts of the modern world with a sense of urgency that still resonates today,” said Isabelle Dervaux, curator of modern drawings at the Morgan. “The relevance of his work to this day can be seen in its wide influence on contemporary artists.”

In the 1950s, when Philip Guston was a central figure of the abstract expressionist movement, he developed a form of abstract, linear drawings characterized by a great concern with structure and balance, in contrast with the more spontaneous gesture typical of the New York school. A prime example of his style during this period is Drawing Related to Zone (Drawing No. 19; 1954) which derives its wonderful rhythm from its balanced composition as well as from variations in the thickness and pressure of the ink strokes.

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1966

Ink on paper, 48.3 x 60.6 cm (19 x 23 7/8 in)

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Richard P. Goodbody, Inc., New York

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1967

Ink on paper, 44.5 x 57 cm (17 ½ x 22 ½ in)

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Sara Wells, New York

For a two-year period, from 1966 to 1968, Philip Guston stopped painting and produced only drawings of startling economy. Even in his most abstract drawings, however, he did not exclude references to the real world. Simple forms evoke primitive renderings of common objects, as in Untitled (1967), where an oval shape can be read as a stone or a head. It was through the hundreds of drawings created during this period that Philip Guston would find inspiration to move away from abstraction and embrace a figurative, almost cartoonlike imagery that would typify his work during the last decade of his life.

Philip Guston

Untitled (Book), 1968

Gouache on paper board, 51 x 76 cm (20 x 30 in)

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit Richard P. Goodbody Inc., New York

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1968

Charcoal on paper, 45.4 x 57 cm (17 7/8 x 22 ½ in)

Private Collection

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Sara Wells

Philip Guston

Figure in Interior, 1970

Pencil on paper, 35.6 x 43.2 cm (14 x 17 in)

Private Collection

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Philip Guston

Web, 1975

Ink on paper, 48.3 x 61 cm (19 x 24 in)

Private Collection

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Michael Korol, New York

It was a transformation that shocked the art world in 1970, as Philip Guston turned to depictions of everyday objects such as shoes, books, and irons. At the same time, disturbed by the social and political upheavals of the late 1960s, Philip Guston addressed the violence of the contemporary world through images of hooded figures reminiscent of the Ku-Klux-Klan.

From the mid-1970s on, autobiographical references became more frequent in Philip Guston’s drawings which included images of himself and his wife, Musa, often in situations reflecting the artist’s anxieties. In Web (1975), for instance, the two figures, half-hidden under a pile of shoes, are caught in a spider web. Philip Guston’s late drawings combine allegorical imagery, dominated by body fragments and accumulations of detritus, with more direct evocations of simple objects from his surroundings, as in Untitled (Cherries), 1980.

Philip Guston

Untitled, 1980

Ink on paper, 47.6 x 66.7 cm (18 3/4 x 26 1/4 in)

Private Collection

Courtesy McKee Gallery, New York

Photo Credit: Richard P. Goodbody Inc., New York

Philip Guston

Untitled (Cherries), 1980

Ink and acrylic on board, 50.8 x 76.2 cm (20 x 30 in)

Private Collection

Philip Guston: Works on Paper is organized by the KunstMuseum Bonn and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich. The exhibition premiered at the KunstMuseum Bonn (March 1 - May 20, 2007) and traveled to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark (May 31 – August 26, 2007), the Albertina in Vienna (September 7 - November 25, 2007) and most recently the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich (December 13, 2007 - March 2, 2008).

A fully illustrated hardcover catalogue for Philip Guston: Works on Paper, published by Hatje Cantz in 2007, features essays by Michael Semff, Christoph Schreier, Isabelle Dervaux, and Poul Erik Tøjner (216 pages, 116 illustrations, 76 in color).

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM

225 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

www.themorgan.org