NEW YORK – If someone were trying to trap me, one of the surest ways would be to put up a sign to say there’s a show focused on tarot inside this building, this cardboard box, this tiger pit. Like the Leonora Carrington show I saw last month, this new exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York City had me in its clutches the moment I saw the ad.
The first impression: the Morgan’s gorgeous coffered ceiling provides a medieval-looking gateway to the exhibit marked TAROT! in a theme-appropriate font below representations of the four suits of the minor arcana: pentagram, sword, wand, and cup. I felt drawn in to a ridiculous degree. This thing is a Witch magnet.
Inside, I saw plenty of people with Witchy tattoos, certain details and choices in dress and jewelry that let me know I was among friends. The exhibit is split into two parts: the first focuses on tarot in Renaissance Italy, as a deck for diverting games. The second explores the contemporary relevance of tarot as a cultural object and application as a tool of occult divination.
The Hanged Man by Bonifacio Bembo from the Visconti-Sforza tarot, 15th century [M. Elison]
Though the tarot can be traced back to the 15th century in Italy, it had no known magical significance in those early days. Instead, it was played as a game of skill for courtiers and people of leisure. The Morgan owns a surviving deck of the Visconti-Sforza tarot, which is one of the most well-known decks of the Renaissance period. This section shows the artwork of artist Bonifacio Bembo, whose artworks will seem familiar to the modern practitioner, particularly in simple trumps like the Hanged Man. These cards are painted in tempera on cardstock, often leafed with gold and silver. Previous installation damage is visible on many of the cards, including pinholes in their top margin. However, the colors have been beautifully preserved, and visitors can marvel at how well these objects have endured the centuries, despite the fact that they’re made of paper and made to be handled.
Didactics in the second section of the show explains the rise in occult usage of the tarot as beginning in the 18th and 19th century British occult revival. Citing Éliphas Levi and Jean-Baptiste-Alliette as trendsetters in tarot as a divinatory tool, the Morgan’s didactics connect a weakening of spiritual authority in the church with a sudden interest in esoterica in the religiously-unmoored people of Europe and the United States. These historical shifts allowed for the rise of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which made space for key figures like Arthur Edward Waite and Aleister Crowley to reshape the relationship between people and their decks of cards.
Notably, artist Pamela Colman Smith receives top billing on the cases that display the Smith-Rider-Waite deck that’s often sold without her name on it at all. Colman Smith is said to have worked from the Sola Busca deck, originally attributed to Nicola di Maestro Antonio, and the oldest complete 78-card deck to feature figural pip cards – images that depict not just, say, 10 cups, but people interacting with 10 cups in ways that suggest a narrative. This prodigious work by Colman Smith is the progenitrix of the numbered, highly suggestive, highly figural tarot style we enjoy and use today.
The explosion of artistic and divinatory tarot decks in the 20th century can trace its roots to Colman Smith’s work, and the Morgan has several compelling examples on display in this show. These range from the codified tarot and weirder forecast and oracle cards by 20th century occultist Austin Osman Spare to Juanjo Christiani’s gorgeous tarot deck inspired by RuPaul’s Drag Race. I saw Crowley’s Thoth deck on display, as well as Carrington’s, alongside rare texts like S.L. MacGregor Mathers’ The Tarot: its Occult Signification, Use in Fortune-Telling, and Method of Play, &c and other esoteric books that speak of the tarot.
Maria Grazia Chiuri’s tarot-inspired dress and coat from Christian Dior’s 2017 collection [M. Elison]
In the foyer off the main hall, one of my favorite pieces in the show stood in a glass cube below a painting of the Death card: a tulle dress overlaid with a satin-crepe and silk organza coat from the house of Christian Dior by designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, hand-embroidered with images from the Visconti di Madrone and Visconti-Sforza tarot decks, from their haute couture autumn-winter 2017 collection. I read the didactic, which said that “Chiuri connected Renaissance visual culture with contemporary fashion, using tarot not as a fortune-telling device but rather a poetic system of images through which garments could convey identity, destiny, and transformation.”
I stood admiring, trying to get a picture without catching any part of the large crowd in the room and having no luck. “I should be allowed to wear this,” I muttered, dejected. “It is my right, as the most flamboyant Witch here.”
“Hoe, I will fight you,” came the answer from a woman on the other side, grinning above her pentagram. She did indeed look like she could offer me fisticuffs for my silk organza.
Living to fight another day, I went and sat on the low black leather couches the Morgan provides to weary travelers, to watch the video reel that compiles examples of tarot cards and readings in cinema. I watched clips from Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7 (1963), Live and Let Die (1973), and knew on sight the clip from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain (1973). This surrealist film, financed in large part by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, contains several scenes of the tarot, including one that claims “the tarot will help you build a soul.”
I took my soul, built and rebuilt, to the Met to while away the rest of the rainy day in the Temple of Dendur. The Witch who wanted my coat was still standing by its case when I left.
Pamela Colman Smith's Rider-Waite deck from Tarot! at the Morgan Library. Photo by M. Elison.
Austin Osman Spare's tarot deck from the Tarot! exhibition at the Morgan Library. Photo by M. Elison.
Tarot! will be at the Morgan Library in in NYC until October 4, 2026.
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