Videos

Virtual Lecture | Benjamin Balint: Kafka's Last Trial

Join author and scholar Benjamin Balint for a live virtual lecture on the international struggle to preserve Franz Kafka’s literary legacy.

Held Wednesday, February 5, 2025.

Centennial Conversations | Maria Popova & Paola Prestini: Creativity in the Margins of Culture

A conversation with Maria Popova and composer Paola Prestini, lensed through the music manuscripts of Clara Schumann and others. New York-based composer-keyboardist Forrest Eimold will play selections of work discussed in the conversation.

Held Tuesday, February 4, 2025.

Franz Kafka

Sal Robinson, Lucy Ricciardi Assistant Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts discusses the exhibition Franz Kafka, on view November 22, 2024 through April 13, 2025.

Collection in Focus: Shahzia Sikander on Indian and Persian Illuminated Manuscripts

For our centennial, we asked some of our friends and collaborators to speak about what they love about the Morgan Library & Museum. Watch artist Shahzia Sikander discusses the centuries-old practice of illuminated manuscripts in India and Persia and what we can learn from the past.

Collection in Focus: Naudline Pierre on William Blake and the importance of the imagination

For our centennial, we asked some of our friends and collaborators to speak about what they love about the Morgan Library & Museum. Watch artist Naudline Pierre discuss her creative inspirations and connection to artist and poet William Blake. Pierre takes us through her favorite works and Blake's connection to the unseen.

Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy

To mark the 2024 centenary of its life as a public institution, the Morgan Library & Museum presents a major exhibition devoted to the life and career of its 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 was one of the most prominent librarians in American history.

Creative Adaptations of Belle da Costa Greene

This program will highlight three of the most significant adaptations of Belle Greene’s life: Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray’s novel The Personal Librarian (2021), Juliane Hiam’s play Revels and Revelations (2010), and Epiphany “Big Piph” Morrow’s hip-hop track “The Ballad of Belle da Costa Greene” (2018).  Held Friday, November 15, 2024.

Centennial Conversations | Maria Popova & Sophie Blackall: Children’s Books as Philosophy for Living

A conversation with Maria Popova and Caldecott-winning children’s book artist and author Sophie Blackall, lensed through Antoine de Saint- Exupéry's original watercolors for The Little Prince and Lewis Carroll’s diary entry from the day he first told the story of Wonderland to the real-life Alice. Held Tuesday, November 12, 2024.

Symposium | Perspectives on Dutch Drawings, Part 2

Symposium | Perspectives on Dutch Drawings, Part 1

Symposium | Perspectives on Dutch Drawings

The Morgan Drawing Institute is pleased to present a symposium held in conjunction with Far and Away: Drawings from the Clement C. Moore Collection on view June 28 through September 22, 2024. Held Friday, September 20, 2024.

Symposium | Belle da Costa Greene

Complementing the opening of the exhibition Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy, this one-day scholarly symposium will bring together experts working on Belle Greene and/or the fields relevant to our understanding of her life and career, including African American history and literature, the history of museums and libraries, Medieval studies, art history, feminist bibliography, and book history. Held Friday, October 25, 2024.

Centennial Conversations | Maria Popova & Marie Howe: How to Be a Living Poem

A conversation with Maria Popova and poet Marie Howe, lensed through the original manuscripts of William Blake's Auguries of Innocence and Walt Whitman's "O Captain, My Captain!". Held Tuesday, October 15, 2024.

Collection in Focus: Anthony Roth Costanzo on the power of written music

Watch opera singer Anthony Roth Constanzo discuss his career and passion for music. From Gluck to Handel to Mozart to Philip Glass, Constanzo takes us through the history of music performance.

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.

Collection in Focus: James Ivory on his archive and creative process

For our Centennial, we asked some of our friends and collaborators to speak about what they love about the Morgan Library & Museum. Watch James Ivory discuss his working process through his archive, which has been at the Morgan since 2017.

Lecture: Liberty to Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift

Join Colin B. Bailey, Katharine J. Rayner Director of The Morgan Library & Museum, for a special opening night lecture that explores drawings by Rembrandt, Watteau, Degas, Renoir, and other highlights in the exhibition, Liberty to Imagination: Drawings from the Eveillard Gift. Held Friday, June 7, 2024.

Collection in Focus: Fran Lebowitz on the Process of Great Writing

For our Centennial, we asked some of our friends and collaborators to speak about what they love about the Morgan Library & Museum. Watch writer and iconic New Yorker Fran Lebowitz describe some of her favorite letters and manuscripts in our collection by her favorite writers.

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.

Collection in Focus: Walton Ford's Passion for Drawing

For our Centennial, we asked some of our friends and collaborators to speak about what they love about the Morgan. First up, artist Walton Ford describes some of his favorites drawings in our collection and what about these works inspire him.

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.

Symposium: Tiepolo Drawings: Reconsiderations and Discoveries, Part 2

The symposium is devoted to the drawings of the Tiepolo family, and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Spirit and Invention: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo.

Presented on January 25, 2024 by the Morgan Drawing Institute.

Symposium: Tiepolo Drawings: Reconsiderations and Discoveries, Part 1

The symposium is devoted to the drawings of the Tiepolo family, and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Spirit and Invention: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo.

Presented on January 25, 2024 by the Morgan Drawing Institute.

Symposium: Tiepolo Drawings: Reconsiderations and Discoveries

The symposium is devoted to the drawings of the Tiepolo family, and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Spirit and Invention: Drawings by Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo.

Presented on January 25, 2024 by the Morgan Drawing Institute.

Smarthistory: Moralized Bible

Collection in Focus: Joseph Mallord William Turner

Take a closer look at J.M.W. Turner’s remarkable work The Pass of St. Gotthard, near Faido with Jennifer Tonkovich, Eugene and Clare Thaw Curator of Drawings and Prints, as she shares its unique connections to art criticism.

Collection in Focus: La prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France

Sheelagh Bevan, our Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Printed Books and Bindings, discusses Blaise Cendrars, born Frédéric Louis Sauser, a catalyst in some of the explosive artistic innovations of the early twentieth century.

Camerata Trajectina

The Sounds of the City as Heard by Jacob Steendam, the First Poet of New York

The early music ensemble Camerata Trajectina follows in Jacob Steendam’s (1616–1672) footsteps and presents Dutch music that once echoed off the walls of the houses of New Amsterdam.

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.

Collection in Focus: Peter Hujar

Dive deep into the archive of the iconic photographer Peter Hujar with Olivia McCall, our Edith Gowin Curatorial Fellow of Photography.