Blockbooks, Ragtime, and John Ashbery Drawings at the Morgan 2026

The Morgan Library & Museum's exhibition lineup for 2026 includes a display of late medieval European blockbooks, the history of ragtime, drawings from the collection of John Ashbery, the life and career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the origins of Tarot, and the story of storytelling. 

Late Medieval European Blockbooks: The First Printed Picture Books opens November 6, 2026 and runs through May 16, 2027, highlighting the short period in European book history from 1450 to 1480 when blockbooks competed with handwritten and typographically-printed books as commercial products for readers.

Blockbooks, now often referred to as 'medieval graphic novels', were highly illustrated books printed entirely from woodcuts, text and image together. As such, they were the first print-on-demand books in the West. While some works maintained texts and imagery popular from manuscript tradition, block cutters and printers also produced new and innovative texts specifically designed for the medium. Ultimately, the cumbersome production process of woodcut-book printing was surpassed by the greater capabilities of typographic printing that integrated woodcuts, and the blockbook genre largely died out by 1480. 

This 30-year span, however, reveals a critical moment in European book history as the increasing demand for books led to inventions and experimentation in book production.

The Morgan holds the largest collection of blockbooks in the United States. A highlight of this exhibition will be the Ars moriendi blockbook, a rare copy printed in the Netherlands about 1467–69. In 2022, the Morgan acquired fifteen leaves of this blockbook that had been held in a private collection to add to the remaining nine leaves purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan in 1902. This acquisition reunited the two parts, forming the only known complete copy.

Other exhibitions include:

* Ragtime: Cakewalk in Pianoland (November 13, 2026 - June 13, 2027) which will trace the genre’s evolution from its roots in West African rhythms and European musical traditions to its pivotal role in the emergence of jazz with selections from The John Davis Collection of Early Printed Musical African Americana on display

* Come Together: 3,000 Years of Stories and Storytelling (January 30, 2026 - May 3, 2026) exploring how stories shape our world with more than 130 printed books, manuscripts, comics, and other artifacts

* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Treasures from the Mozarteum Foundation of Salzburg (March 13, 2026 - May 31, 2026) including Mozart’s letters, music manuscripts, and first editions

* Friends Who Came to See Me: Drawings from John Ashbery’s Collection (May 1, 2026 - October 25, 2026) based around the 25 works on paper donated to the Morgan in 2019 from the collection of American poet and art critic John Ashbery (1927–2017)

* Hujar: Contact (May 22, 2026 - October 25, 2026), a look into the life, times, and creative evolution of the master photographer with more than 110 contact sheets and 20 enlargements from the Morgan’s Peter Hujar Collection, many of which bear editing marks that indicate ideas about cropping and printing

* Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions (June 26, 2026 - October 4, 2026) exploring the origins of Tarot in Renaissance Italy and its ongoing relevance as a source of inspiration for artists in the 20th and 21st centuries