Panel: Tarot in Art History
Morgan Library scholars and artist Ali Banisadr trace tarot from its Renaissance Italian origins through its influence on modern and contemporary visual art.
Why we picked this
The Morgan holds some of the earliest surviving tarot cards — having the curators who know those objects best in conversation with an art historian and a working painter makes this something more than a panel talk.
Tarot cards began as a card game in fifteenth-century northern Italy, illustrated with imagery that drew from classical allegory, court culture, and early Christian symbolism. The Morgan Library holds examples from those earliest decks, and this panel — organized around the exhibition Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions — takes that material seriously as art history.
Speakers include Morgan curators Claire Gilman and Joshua O’Driscoll, art historian Susan Aberth of Bard College (a leading scholar of tarot’s relationship to surrealism and contemporary art), Frank Trujillo, and artist Ali Banisadr, whose paintings engage directly with the iconographic traditions that run through the cards. The combination of curatorial expertise, art historical scholarship, and a living practitioner makes for a conversation that moves between the archive and the studio.
Free with advance registration. Part of the Morgan’s broader programming around the tarot exhibition.