Franz Kafka
Morgan Library & Museum, New York
Through April 13, 2025
Unknown photographer
MS. Kafka 55, fol. 4r
© The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
© Archiv Klaus Wagenbach
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 Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
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.
Illustrated by Elisabeth Siefer
Mexico City, 1985
Private Collection
Photography by Carmen González Fraile
courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum
Illustrated by Rebecca Green (b. 1986)
New York: Viking, 2021
Bodleian Libraries
Penguin Random House LLC;
Artwork © Rebecca Green
Original artwork from Kafka and the Doll, 2019
Watercolor and pen and ink
© Rebecca Green, Courtesy the artist
Original artwork from Kafka and the Doll, 2019
Private Collection
Photography by Carmen González Fraile,
courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum
© Rebecca Green
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
Franz Kafka @ Morgan Library & Museum
November 22, 2024 - April 13, 2025
