Past Exhibitions

The brilliant and celebrated writer, dramatist, aesthete, wit, and self-proclaimed "lord of language" was the focus of Oscar Wilde: A Life in Six Acts, originally organized by the British Library. Wilde's (1854–1900) rise to success as a literary and social figure was meteoric. His decline to notoriety and disgrace was equally dramatic. Twelve years after publishing his first work of fiction, in 1888, he was dead at the age of forty-six, buried in a pauper's grave on the outskirts of Paris.

Drawing upon the Morgan's collection of Poyer manuscripts, the exhibition also included choice loans of drawings and manuscripts from this country and abroad.

More than two hundred dazzling and finely crafted objects of metal, stone, wood, and other prized materials characterize the art of Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, a traveling exhibition that explored one of the greatest technological achievements of Near Eastern archaeology.

Approximately 100 manuscripts, letters, rare printed documents, objects, maps, and published writings—drawn primarily from the collections of the Morgan; the Gilder Lehrman Collection, on deposit at the Morgan; and the Huntington Library—were included.