The Morgan Library & Museum Presents Franz Kafka

Featuring the Bodleian Libraries’ Kafka archive,

on view for the first time in the United States

——————————–

The Morgan Library & Museum presents Franz Kafka, on view November 22, 2024, 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 will 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.

The Morgan’s Katharine J. Rayner Director, Colin B. Bailey, said, “The Morgan was delighted at the opportunity to celebrate our centennial in conjunction with the Bodleian and to honor Franz Kafka and his enduring impact on literature. We are honored to be the sole American venue for this landmark literary exhibition.”

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 will be able to 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. 

———————-

Photo: Franz Kafka, Altstädter Ring, Prague. © Archiv Klaus Wagenbach.

———————-

Sal Robinson, Lucy Ricciardi Assistant Curator of Literary and Historical Manuscripts, said, “This exhibition, the first of its kind on Franz Kafka in the United States, will not only provide a unique opportunity to celebrate Kafka’s work and learn about his life, but will also engage with rarely emphasized aspects of both, from women like Ottla Kafka and Milena Jesenská, who played key roles in his life, to the very much ongoing afterlife of his works as they are translated into other languages and media.”

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.

Items including literary notebooks, drawings, diaries, letters, postcards, architectural models, film clips, and photographs identify the people, events, and places that shaped the author, while giving insight into his personality. In a postcard to his brother-in-law, for instance, Kafka jokes about his exceptional skiing skills despite being severely ill at the time. His Hebrew notebook and his letter (in Hebrew) to his teacher demonstrate his dedication to learning the language that connected him to his family roots, but we also find snippets of Czech, French, and Chinese, a reminder of Kafka’s keen multilingualism and interest in languages beyond German and Hebrew.

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.

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 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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Franz Kafka

November 22, 2024–April 13, 2025

PROGRAMS

Panel Discussion—Kafkaesque: Creative Responses to Kafka

Thursday, January 9, 2025 7-8:15 PM
Tickets: $25; $20 for Morgan Members 

A century after his death, Franz Kafka’s literary legacy continues to influence contemporary creative works. This panel discussion will highlight three individuals—an artist, a writer, and a playwright—who have found inspiration in Kafka’s personal narrative and his writings: Joshua Cohen’s short story Return to the Museum (2024), Maria Kalman’s illustrations and stories from Still Life With Remorse (2024), and Josh Luxenberg’s theatrical adaptation of “A Hunger Artist.” Join the creators for a lively program featuring the backstories of these works, as well as discussion and performance.

——————

Virtual Lecture—Benjamin Balint: Kafka’s Last Trial

Wednesday, February 5, 2025, 12-1 PM
Tickets: FREE; registration is required. 

Join author and scholar Benjamin Balint for a virtual lecture on the international struggle to preserve Franz Kafka’s literary legacy. Balint will discuss the legal, ethical, and political dilemmas of a writer whose last wish was betrayed by his closest friend; a wrenching escape from Nazi invaders as the gates of Europe closed; a love affair between exiles stranded in Tel Aviv, and two countries whose obsessions with overcoming the traumas of the past came to a head in Israel’s Supreme Court. Held on Zoom, global audiences are invited to consider their own connections to one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

Benjamin Balint is the author of several acclaimed works of non-fiction including Kafka’s Last Trial (2018), winner of the 2020 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature; Running Commentary (2010), and co-author of Jerusalem: City of the Book (2019). Balint has taught literature at the Al- Quds Bard College of Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem. His reviews and cultural journalism have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Haaretz, the Claremont Review of Books, the Weekly Standard, and Die Zeit (Germany), and his translations from Hebrew have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry International, and Crazyhorse.  

——————

Gallery Tour—Franz Kafka with Benjamin Balint

Wednesday, February 5, 2025, 2-3 PM
Tickets: FREE; no advance registration is needed

Join writer Benjamin Balint for an in-gallery discussion of Franz Kafka as he speaks of Kafka’s works amidst the very objects that bear witness to his life.

——————

Concert: Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis 

Thursday, March 6, 2025, 7–8:30 PM
Tickets: $40; $35 for Morgan Members 

Experience the themes and moods conjured by Franz Kafka through the eyes of American composer Philip Glass. This dynamic and wide-ranging program explores Glass’s long relationship with Kafka’s literary works. Pianist Jenny Lin will perform Metamorphosis 1–5 for solo piano, actor Saori Tsukada will read select passages from Kafka’s best-known works, and Lindsay Rosenberg will perform the world premiere of Glass’s new works for solo bass. Following the performances, music publisher Richard Guérin will lead a discussion on Glass’s creative process and the ways in which Kafka inspired his compositions.  

——————

Lecture—“Daylight at the Exit”: Women Translating Kafka

Friday, March 14, 2025 6-7 PM
Tickets: FREE; advance registration is encouraged but not required. 

What does it mean for Kafka’s work that the first translations were by women? Join Michelle Woods as she examines this question in a lecture on Milena Jesenská and Willa Muir, and their roles in establishing Kafka as a globally influential writer. For years, both women have been misread and misrepresented: one was idealized as Kafka’s lover, the other faulted for the limitations of Kafka’s translations. Woods challenges these characterizations, re-centering the lives of these brilliant women in the story of Kafka and discussing their feminist impact on modern perceptions of his works.

Michelle Woods is the author of Kafka Translated: How Translators Have Shaped Our Reading of Kafka (Bloomsbury, 2013); Censoring Translation: Censorship, Theatre and the Politics of Translation (Continuum, 2012); and Translating Milan Kundera (Multilingual Matters, 2006). Half-Irish and half-Czech, she has written several articles on the translation of Czech and Irish literature and film. Her translation of Adolf Hoffmeister’s 1929 interview–and translation lesson for Finnegans Wake–with James Joyce was published in Granta (2005). She has also translated work by the young Czech writers Jakuba Katalpa and Marek Šindelka, both published in Words Without Borders (2014). Woods graduated from Trinity College Dublin and was a Fulbright Fellow (Columbia University) and an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Fellow (Dublin City University). She is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz. 

——————

Lecture—Nahma Sandrow: Kafka and the Vagabonds

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 6-7 PM
Tickets: $20; $25 for Morgan Members 

———–
…once Yiddish has taken hold of you and moved you–and Yiddish is everything, the words, the Chasidic melody, and the essential character of this East European actor himself… – Franz Kafka

In conjunction with the exhibition Franz Kafka, playwright and Yiddish theater scholar Nahma Sandrow will present an intimate lecture in J. Pierpont Morgan’s historic library on the cultural significance of Yiddish theater in pre-war Europe. As a regular audience member, Kafka’s enthusiasm for Yiddish theater made its way into his diaries, writings, and dreams.

Dr. Nahma Sandrow is a playwright, librettist, and scholar of theater. She is the author of Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater; God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Translation; and Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas. She has developed award-winning musicals based on Yiddish material including Kuni-Lemi and Vagabond Stars that enjoyed long Off- Broadway runs before touring. Sandrow is Professor Emerita at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, and has lectured at institutions including Oxford University, Harvard University, and the Smithsonian Institution.  

——————

SPONSORSHIP

Franz Kafka is made possible with generous support from Frederick J. Iseman. Major support is provided by the Drue and H.J. Heinz II Charitable Trusts, Alyce Williams Toonk, and the Sherman Fairchild Fund for Exhibitions.  

—————— 

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM

A museum and independent research library located in the heart of New York City, the Morgan Library & Museum began as the personal library of financier, collector, and cultural benefactor J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913). The Morgan offers the public close encounters with great works of human accomplishment in a setting treasured for its intimate scale and historic significance. Its collection of manuscripts, rare books, music, drawings, and works of art comprises a unique and dynamic record of civilization, as well as an incomparable repository of ideas and of the creative process from 4000 BC to the present.

The Morgan Library & Museum | 225 Madison Avenue | 212.685.0008 | themorgan.org 

———————–

Visit AAQ’s Museum Architecture Portfolio: