Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Walt Whitman: Bard of Democracy

June 7 through September 15, 2019

“Comrades! I am the bard of Democracy,” Walt Whitman announced in a notebook in 1859.  Over his 73 years (1819–1892), he essentially made good on that claim.  From humble origins in Long Island and Brooklyn, he earned a global audience that never stops growing.  On the two hundredth anniversary of his birth he continues to speak to new generations. The exhibition explores Whitman’s process of self-invention, from his early years as a journalist, through the early 1850s when Whitman began to write more privately and poetically, to his final years.

Whitman not only sounded a “barbaric yawp” over the rooftops of the world, but he also helped his country to reconcile its famous contradictions through his inclusivity and his extraordinary body of work. Several of Whitman’s notebooks will be on display, as well as his portraitist’s copy of Leaves of Grass (1855) and the famous letter written to Whitman by Ralph Waldo Emerson commending that book. The exhibition will establish Whitman’s unblinking witness to the Civil War and display the great poems that he wrote in honor of the martyred president including “O Captain! My Captain!” Also on view are documents from Oscar Wilde, Hart Crane, Federico García Lorca and Allen Ginsberg, which trace the writer’s influence on the twentieth century as well. The exhibition draws on the Morgan’s own holdings as well as generous loans from the great Whitman collections at the Library of Congress.

Lead sponsor
The Calmus Foundation

Walt Whitman: Bard of Democracy is also made possible with generous support from the Gilder Foundation, the Charina Endowment Fund, Joshua W. Sommer, and The Themis Anastasia Brown Fund, and assistance from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Susan Jaffe Tane, and Christian Keesee.

Phillips & Taylor, Photograph of Walt Whitman, 1873. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Selected Images

Phillips & Taylor, Photograph of Walt Whitman, 1873. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Walt Whitman's cardboard butterfly, 1850. Manuscript Division, Thomas Biggs Harned Collection of Walt Whitman Papers, Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), O Captain! my captain! April 27, 1890, autograph manuscript. The Morgan Library & Museum, MA 1212.1. Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2012.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), Walt Whitman's Books, broadside advertisement printed on linen, circa 1871. The Morgan Library & Museum, gift of Charles E. Feinberg, 1959; PML 50638. Photography by Graham S Haber 2017.

Napoleon Sarony (1821-1896), Carte de visite photograph of Oscar Wilde, 1882. The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased on the Drue Heinz Fund, 2017; MA 8916. Photography by Janny Chiu, 2019.

Moses P. Rice and Sons?, Walt Whitman and his rebel soldier friend Pete Doyle, 1865, photograph; albumen print on card mount. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

George Frank E. Pearsall (1841-1931), Walt Whitman, 1871, photographic print. The Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), An American Poet at Last!, self-review, Brooklyn, 1855. The Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Draft of preface for Democratic Vistas, circa 1871, autograph manuscript. The Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Notebook with trial lines for Leaves of Grass, circa 1847-1854. The Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Notebook with trial lines for Leaves of Grass, circa 1847-1854. The Library of Congress. Image provided courtesy of the Library of Congress.