Exhibits, Past and Present.
Exquisite Corpse: Edward Gorey’s Moveable Books
2024
Among his many other accolades—author, illustrator, set designer, costume designer, printmaker, playwright, and puppeteer—Edward Gorey is, at his core, a Book Artist. The House’s 2024 Exhibit Exquisite Corpse presents Gorey immersed in, and gleefully subverting, the physical realm of The Book. Manipulating folds, pagination, and expectation, Gorey allows endless visual and narrative possibilities to quite literally unfold. This show promises to be a treat for both lovers of books and those who enjoy disassembling them.
Dressed to Kill: Edward Gorey and the Social Fabric
2023
Sartorial wonders abound in Edward Gorey’s work. Whether it’s his lush costume designs for Dracula, his elegant villains and gender-bending strangers, his sweatered cats and sneakered monsters, or the iconic style of the man himself, Gorey rebuilt the language of fashion from the ground up. His insistence on pushing boundaries in every stitch keeps him cutting-edge even today, and makes him a serious contender for the Canon of Camp. Join us as we step into Gorey’s closet for the 2023 Season.
Doing the Steps: Edward Gorey and the Dance of Art
2022
Edward Gorey’s professional career as an author, illustrator, book artist, printmaker and designer spanned almost fifty years and produced over a hundred of his own books, set and costume designs, and thousands of commercial illustrations. Additionally, Gorey pursued a passion for more than 30 years which, to anyone else, might have been a full-time job in itself: his nightly attendance at the New York City Ballet.
Hapless Children: Drawings from Mr. Gorey’s Neighborhood
2021
Our 2021 Exhibit offers a not-for-the-squeamish romp through several very ill-fated childhoods—including Edward’s. Delving deeper, the Exhibit ruminates on Children’s Literature and what happens when we take a moment to view all of Gorey’s works as Children’s Literature. We also look at Edward’s own childhood and produce some grand speculations on how that upbringing influences his works. Have actual children enjoyed this exhibit? Yes, interesting children have.
He wrote it all down Zealously: Edward Gorey’s Interesting Lists
2020
Edward Gorey’s 116 or so self-authored works are only an iceberg tip to a vast body of unpublished works spilling across dozens of notebooks, stuffed into file folders—or neatly three-hole punched into binders. These unpublished works comprise the exhibit He Wrote it all Down Zealously. In his notebooks, Gorey’s spontaneous outpourings were accompanied by scratched-over word options, asides, and frequently quick thumbnails (demonstrating that Gorey considered the visual flow of a book from its very inception). Viewed together, a parallel universe of familiar Gorey types: misadventurous adults, doomed children, shaman-like animals, and mysteriously-animated inanimate objects comes into being, along with various whimseys, false starts, outlines, deadlines, costumes, sets, book lists, film lists, lists of lists, appointments, epiphanies and marginalia. There are also a lot of Q.R.V. In short, a graphic attempt to tame a lot of internal chaos.
Hippity Wippity: Edward Gorey and the Language of Nonsense
2019
Nonsense is a literary genre? Yes, it is—and a very challenging one that revels in breaking down any expected narratives and structures, that lobotomizes language, that confuses with inexplicable storylines and thrusts the reader into an active participation. Basically, in describing the elements of Nonsense you are also describing the works of Edward Gorey as well. Nonsense does not imply the absence of sense so much as another way of arriving at a truth. Hippity Wippity is about the fluid nature that images and language can have. It is about the dark whimsey that circulates within the universe. Some will call that the Tao, but we prefer to call it Hippity Wippity.
Murder He Wrote: Edward Gorey and the Art of the Mystery
2018
Murder He Wrote reveals Gorey's strange world of suspicious characters, red herrings, and inconclusive revelations. It is a crosshatched black and white world of both rigid social class and brutal anarchy where nothing much happens until it does. It is, in fact, a world very much like its author: brimming with false clues and mystery.
Edward Gorey’s Cabinet of Curiosities
2017
Our 2017 exhibit Edward Gorey’s Cabinet of Curiosities showcases some of the objects, artwork and oddities that Edward filled his House with, all in the form of a Wunderkammer: the 15th Century precursor to our modern-day museum.
Artifacts from the Archives: Rare, Never-Seen, Hardly-Ever Seen, & Rediscovered Works by Edward Gorey
2016
As the title suggests, our 2016 show features a trove of never-seen and rarely-seen artwork produced by writer/illustrator Edward Gorey. Artifacts from the Archives offers an eclectic and pleasantly inexplicable menagerie of characters, creatures and landscapes in ink, paper, ceramic, and leather, which have—until now—languished in obscurity.
From Aesop to Updike: Edward Gorey’s Book Cover Art
2015
Our 2015 exhibit features both first editions and original art: five decades of Edward Gorey's commercial assignments. Intriguing, distinguishable, elegant and a little off. A remarkable additional body of work from an artist already known for his remarkable body of work.
F is for Fantods: The 28 Books of Edward Gorey’s Fantod Press
2014
The Fantod Press published such illustrious writers and illustrators as Ogdred Weary, Mrs Regera Dowdy, Eduard Blutig, O. Müde, Raddory Gewe, Edward Pig, Garrod Weedy, Awdrey-Gore, and someone named Om. All of them have one very important thing in common: all were Edward Gorey.
Edward Gorey’s Vinegar Works
2013
Published in 1963 as a slip-case collection of three books intended to instruct, appall and amuse, The Vinegar Works: Three Volumes of Moral Instruction by Edward Gorey celebrates its golden anniversary this year. A special exhibition of artwork from the three volumes — The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Insect God, and The West Wing — will be on display at The Edward Gorey House.
Edward Gorey’s Envelope Art
2012
The book Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey and Peter F. Neumeyer and our new exhibit provide a rare glimpse into this unusual collaboration. This show also includes many other illustrated and colored envelopes to family and friends from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Edward Gorey and the Performing Arts
2011
This year’s exhibit features a wide range of Edward Gorey's works for the performing arts, including work he did at Harvard, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, his ‘entertainments’ on Cape Cod, and many more.
Artful Associations: Edward Gorey Illustrates Famous Authors
2010
Artful Associations offers a showcase of Edward Gorey's works for other authors, including Hillaire Belloc, Florence Heide, Edward Lear, T.S. Eliot, John Updike, Muriel Sparks, and many more. This exhibit features original pencil sketches, pen and ink drawings, and watercolors. Many works in the exhibit are unpublished; some are on loan from private collections and have never before been on public display, creating a special opportunity for even the most serious Gorey fans and collectors to see works exhibited for the first time.
Gorey’s Creatures: Real and Imagined
2009
Welcome to the Menagerie. This year’s exhibit features a wide range of animals and creatures from Gorey's ever-popular cats and bats, to bugs and slugs, and the imaginary characters Figbash and Skrump. This exhibit showcases original pencil sketches, pen-and-ink drawings, watercolors, and even some of Gorey's elusive hand-sewn stuffed creatures. Many works in the exhibit are unpublished; some are on loan from private collections and have never before been on public display, creating a special opportunity for even the most serious Gorey fans and collectors to see works exhibited for the first time.
Cool it with Books
2008
Celebrate Edward Gorey's children's books at The Edward Gorey House this year. This exhibit offers a peek into Gorey’s sketchbooks, including many original pen-and-ink, watercolor, and preliminary pencil illustrations for children's books of his own creation, and for other noted children's authors including Peter Neumeyer, Florence Parry Heide, Edward Lear, Hilaire Belloc, T. S. Eliot, and others. Other special books — such as Gorey's only pop-up book, The Dwindling Party, and the three-dimensional accordian book The Tunnel Calamity — are highlighted, as well as early drawings and illustrations from Gorey’s childhood years.