From Renaissance Tarot to Contemporary Art: A Major Exhibition on the History of the Tarot at the Morgan Library

From June 26 to October 4, 2026, the Morgan Library & Museum in New York will host “Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions,” a major exhibition tracing the evolution of the tarot, from its origins in Renaissance Italy to the role it continues to play in contemporary artistic imagination. Divided into two sections, the exhibition aims to highlight how tarot cards originated as a refined court game in the 15th century and were only much later associated with divination,esotericism, and the concept of destiny. Throughout the 20th century, however, these cards became a source of inspiration for numerous artists, offering new tools to explore symbolic and imaginary worlds that offered alternatives to the conventions of modern art.

The first section, “Renaissance Symbols,” is dedicated to the oldest known tarot decks and explores the cultural context of the Italian courts where they originated. The exhibition traces the development of the cards’ iconography and how these images formed the basis for subsequent esoteric interpretations. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the famous Visconti-Sforza deck, housed at the Morgan Library and considered the most important Renaissance deck to have survived to the present day. For the first time in North America, the illustrated cards held by the New York institution are being brought together with those belonging to the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, allowing the public to admire a large part of this extraordinary masterpiece all at once.

The second part of the exhibition, “Modern Visions,” explores the deep connection between the tarot and 20th- and 21st-century art. The exhibition begins with the famous Rider-Waite-Smith deck, created in 1909 by the mystic Arthur Edward Waite and illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, which has become one of the fundamental references of modern esoteric culture.

Through four historical periods in which interest in the occult was particularly widespread, the exhibition aims to illustrate how Tarot iconography has influenced internationally renowned artists, including André Breton, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Jess, Niki de Saint Phalle, Betye Saar, Kerstin Brätsch, and Chris Ofili, who have reinterpreted the symbols and archetypes of the cards in their own works.

The exhibition is rounded out bya video installation dedicated to the presence of the tarot in cinema and popular culture. The montage traces decades of cinematic history through famous sequences from films such as *Cléo from 5 to 7* (1963) and *Live and Let Die* (1973) by Agnès Varda, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s *The Holy Mountain* (1973) and *Drylongso* (1998) , highlighting the tarot’s enduring ability to transcend languages, eras, and forms of expression.

The “Renaissance Symbols” section is curated by Joshua O’Driscoll and Frank Trujillo, while “Modern Visions” is curated by Claire Gilman, in collaboration with assistant curator Esther Levy. The exhibition offers a journey through history, symbolism, and contemporary art, demonstrating how the tarot continues to exert a profound fascination on the collective imagination even today.

From Renaissance Tarot to Contemporary Art: A Major Exhibition on the History of the Tarot at the Morgan Library

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