On Friday, October 23, the Morgan Library & Museum at Madison Avenue and East 36th Street opens Rembrandt's Lions: Art and Exile in the Dutch Republic. That evening, from 6 to 7 PM, the curator gives a free lecture on the show. A week later another exhibition opens on a Friday, then another, then another. Between October 23 and November 13, the Morgan opens four new exhibitions on four Fridays in a row. Its two summer shows close in the middle of that run.
The museum is free every Friday from 5 to 8 PM. Three of the four openings come with a curator's talk scheduled inside that window. If you live within walking distance, the whole fall season is laid out as a series of Friday evenings.
The Weekend Both Seasons Share
The changeover starts with a short overlap. Hujar:Contact, with more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan's Peter Hujar Collection, closes Sunday, October 25. Friends Who Came to See Me: Drawings from John Ashbery's Collection closes the same day. Rembrandt's Lions opens two days earlier. From Friday the 23rd through Sunday the 25th, all three are up at once.
That weekend you can see contact sheets that include Capuchin Catacombs, Palermo, with Paul Thek from 1963 and Marsha P. Johnson on Christopher Street Pier, Easter from 1976. The Ashbery rooms include the poet's early collage Late for School from 1948, eight portraits of Ashbery, and works by Larry Rivers, R.B. Kitaj, Jane Freilicher, Jean Hélion, Red Grooms and Niki de Saint-Phalle. The collection's core is a 2019 gift from Ashbery's husband, David Kermani. On the same visit you can walk into the Rembrandt show on its opening weekend. Those three days are the last chance to see the summer program and the first chance to see the fall one.
If you missed the Hujar show earlier, the Morgan's calendar still has two related events before it closes. A free Spanish-language gallery talk is on Friday, October 16, from 6:30 to 7:30 PM. A screening of Peter Hujar's Day is on Saturday, October 17, from 2 to 3:30 PM, free with museum admission.
Four Openings, One Week Apart
Here is the run in order. Each exhibition is listed with its opening day and the program the Morgan has attached to it.
- Friday, October 23: Rembrandt's Lions. Runs through January 31, 2027. Curator Sarah W. Mallory gives the free lecture Make Art, Not War from 6 to 7 PM.
- Friday, October 30: Fantasy and Reality: The Art of Johan Tobias Sergel. Runs through January 31, 2027. Its free lecture, given by John Marciari, comes a week later.
- Friday, November 6: Graphic Devotions: Late Medieval European Blockbooks. Runs through May 16, 2027. Marciari's Sergel lecture is the same evening, 6 to 7 PM.
- Friday, November 13: Ragtime: Cakewalk in Pianoland. Runs through June 13, 2027. A free curator roundtable is that evening from 6 to 7 PM.
So October 23, November 6 and November 13 each pair a free curator program with the free Friday evening. The Morgan says registration for the lectures is encouraged but does not guarantee a seat. Free Friday admission needs its own reservation, and those tickets are released one week ahead. In practice, each Friday's free tickets go on sale on the Friday before.
What Each Friday Brings
The four shows cover very different material.
Rembrandt. Rembrandt's Lions looks at the artist through the migrants, exiles, refugees and diaspora communities of the Dutch Republic. It combines rarely shown Rembrandt etchings from the Morgan's own collection with loans, including Recumbent Lion of 1660 from the Rijksmuseum and The Mill, about 1645 to 1648, from the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Other works on view include Self-Portrait with Raised Sabre of 1634, The Flight into Egypt: A Night Piece of 1651, and three impressions of The Three Crosses from about 1653. Mallory has arranged the show in six sections, starting with "Pride of Lions" and ending with "Beyond Belonging."
Sergel. A week later, the Morgan turns to a Swedish neoclassical sculptor many visitors will not know. The Nationalmuseum in Sweden organized the Sergel exhibition in partnership with the Morgan. It includes drawings and sculpture in terracotta, marble, bronze and plaster. The drawings include self-portraits, caricatures and personal scenes with Henry Fuseli, King Gustav III and others. The sculpture includes two terracotta Cupid and Psyche models and The Faun of 1774, shown with preparatory material and a related bronze. The Art Newspaper reported that The Faun is one of only a few Stockholm sculptures making the trip to New York.
Blockbooks. On November 6, Graphic Devotions opens as the first U.S. exhibition devoted only to blockbooks, with 20 bound works and five prints. At its center is the Morgan's Ars moriendi, made in the Netherlands or Lower Rhine around 1467 to 1469. It is now a complete copy again. In 2022 the museum bought 15 leaves to join the ones J. Pierpont Morgan bought in 1902. Loans come from the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, and John McQuillen organized the show. On November 6, the Sergel lecture and the blockbook opening fall on the same evening.
Ragtime. The run ends on November 13 with Ragtime: Cakewalk in Pianoland. It traces the music from Black musical traditions in nineteenth-century America into worldwide popular culture, and on to its influence on jazz, rock and hip-hop. The show is told in seven parts, covering "Blind Tom," Ernest Hogan, Aida Overton Walker and Scott Joplin. Its centerpiece is the original 1899 agreement between Joplin and John Stark for Maple Leaf Rag. It draws on the John Davis Collection of Early Printed Musical African Americana. Jesse Erickson, Robinson McClellan and guest curator John Davis organized it, and all three take part in the opening-night roundtable, moderated by John T. Reddick.
The Paid Programs, and the Free Weekday Ones
Some events in the run cost money. On Saturday, November 14, there is an intaglio etching workshop from 10 AM to 4 PM. It costs $250, or $240 for members, and includes an early-access tour of the Rembrandt galleries. John Davis's multimedia concert on Wednesday, November 18, was listed at $60, or $50 for members, and its event page already shows it as sold out. The program runs from Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Blind Boone to Scott Joplin, Igor Stravinsky and Percy Grainger. On Thursday, December 3, the Sergel-inspired Drawing the Body workshop costs $40, or $30 for members, and includes a live drawing session with bodybuilder Victor Martinez.
If an evening seat fills up, there are two free online lunchtime talks. A Rembrandt's Lions program is on Wednesday, November 4, and McQuillen's blockbook lecture is on Wednesday, November 11. Both run from noon to 1 PM and require registration. A free Spanish-language Rembrandt gallery talk follows on Friday, November 20, from 6:30 to 7:30 PM.
Planning Around the Friday Window
The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:30 AM to 5 PM, stays open until 8 PM on Fridays, and is closed Mondays. It closes for Thanksgiving Day, which falls inside the run of the fall shows. Regular admission is $25 for adults, $17 for seniors 65 and over, and $13 for students with ID. Children 12 and under are free with an adult. Every ticket has an entry time. The Morgan says visitors cannot enter before that time and late entry is not guaranteed.
The Morgan Café is open until 7:30 PM on Fridays, compared with 4 PM on other days. It serves a full menu in a glass-enclosed room with no reservation needed, and you do not need museum admission to eat there. On a lecture Friday, you could have dinner at the café and still make a 6 PM talk.
One show already up at the Morgan closes during the run. Luminous Color ends November 8, two days after the blockbook opening, while the fall Collections Spotlight stays up until January 10, 2027.
The Sergel show also lines up with the calendar at Scandinavia House, the Nordic cultural center. Its Nordic International Film Festival has screenings on October 23 and 24, the same weekend Rembrandt's Lions opens. Its annual Holiday Concert includes traditional Swedish Lucia processions on Sunday, December 6, and Saturday, December 12, both at 5 PM. By then, the Swedish sculptor's work will have been on view on Madison Avenue for more than a month.
Events at both institutions sell out and sometimes change, so check the Morgan's program listings before each Friday.
Tom Wexler works with owners and buyers of townhouses in the blocks around the Morgan, and he knows how historic buildings like these are kept up and how they change hands. If you own a townhouse near Madison Avenue and East 36th Street, or are thinking about buying one, work with Tom Wexler on a tailor-made townhouse plan.
