Press release —
Exhibition dedicated to Sergel opens at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York
On 30 October Fantasy and Reality: The Art of Johan Tobias Sergel will open at the Morgan Library & Museum. The exhibition has been organized by Nationalmuseum and is a smaller version of the exhibition displayed at the museum during this spring and summer.
Johan Tobias Sergel is one of Sweden’s most important artists and a leading figure of European Neoclassicism, yet he remains relatively unknown outside Sweden. Internationally celebrated during his lifetime, and heralded by some as the greatest sculptor since antiquity, he later faded from the broader narrative of European art history.
This fall, the Morgan Library & Museum will introduce Sergel to a new generation of audiences with the first major exhibition devoted to the artist outside Europe. The exhibition brings together a significant selection of the artist’s works, including sculpture in terracotta, marble, bronze, and plaster, and a major group of the artist’s drawings. Sergel’s artistry as a draughtsman is highlighted through a selection of self-portraits, alongside works that illuminate his artistic friendships, his relationship with King Gustav III and the Stockholm court, and his life with his common-law wife, Anna Rella Hellström.
Joining these drawings are several terracotta models, including two versions of Cupid and Psyche. The exhibition will also feature Sergel’s first major marble sculpture The Faun, presented together with its preparatory drawings, clay model, and a related bronze, allowing visitors to follow the work’s development from initial conception to finished sculpture. Throughout the exhibition, drawings by Sergel’s friends and contemporaries, including Henry Fuseli, Jacob Philipp Hackert, Esprit Antoine Gibelin, François-André Vincent, George Romney, and Julien de Parme, provide broader context for the artistic circles in which he lived and worked.
The exhibition Fantasy and Reality: The Art of Johan Tobias Sergel will be on view at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York 30 October 2026 – 31 January 2027. The exhibition has been organized by Nationalmuseum, Sweden, in partnership with the Morgan Library & Museum.
Fantasy and Reality: The Art of Johan Tobias Sergel
For press information
Hanna Tottmar, Press officer, press@nationalmuseum.se, +46 8 5195 4400
Topics
Nationalmuseum is Sweden’s museum of art and design. The collections comprise some 700,000 objects, including paintings, sculpture, drawings and graphic art from the 16th century up to the beginning of the 20th century and the collection of applied art and design up to the present day. Nationalmuseum is a government authority with a mandate to preserve cultural heritage and promote art, interest in art and knowledge of art.
