Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique: William Hogarth’s Progress Prints

October 12, 2026–May 30, 2027

Drawing from the rich William Hogarth collections of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library, Satire, Sympathy, and Social Critique investigates the power and reverberating impact of the artist’s acclaimed “moral progress” prints. Hogarth’s contemporaries immediately recognized these works for their ability to both entertain and call out cruelty and injustice, and artists and publishers over the following centuries have engaged with Hogarth’s “modern moral subjects” through appropriation and parody. The exhibition features six of Hogarth’s “moral progresses,” which are simultaneously satirical and empathetic, as well as additional archival context on the artist’s commitment to social and political advocacy. Selected examples of responses and reuses of Hogarth’s prints, both written and visual, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century demonstrate the continued and enduring relevance of these works.

Curator: Cynthia Roman

Image: William Hogarth, A Harlot’s Progress, Plate 1, 1732. Etching and engraving. The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library

Beauty Unadorned: Fire!! and the Harlem Renaissance

October 19, 2026–May 30, 2027

Beauty Unadorned: Fire!! and the Harlem Renaissance celebrates the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance experimental magazine Fire!!, the first and only issue of which appeared on November 15, 1926. Now remembered for its transgression of the era’s social codes, its formal experimentation, and its unabashed manifesto embracing Black art for art’s sake, Fire!! reflected the ethos and vision of the younger generation of the New Negro movement — including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Wallace Thurman — who insisted on their artistic freedom, without concern for the older generation’s preoccupation with respectability. The exhibition showcases correspondence, early written drafts, photographs, and artworks from these writers and thinkers as well as other contributors and friends, drawn from Beinecke Library’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection.

Curator: Melissa Barton

Image: Fire!!: A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists. Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1926. James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Cave Canem: A Home for Black Poetry

October 19, 2026–May 30, 2027

Cave Canem: A Home for Black Poetry explores the formation and impact of this groundbreaking poetry collective founded by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady. Recognizing a need for spaces dedicated to the development of Black poetry, Derricotte and Eady created Cave Canem (from the Latin, “beware of the dog”) in 1996, an annual summer intensive workshop for Black poets at all stages of their writing lives. In the years since, Cave Canem has evolved into a dynamic and enduring poetry community and a force in literary arts advocacy. Drawing on archival materials and poetry from the Cave Canem Records and from the literary papers of the two founding poets, Cave Canem: A Home for Black Poetry features manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, books, and poems to reveal the extraordinary ways Cave Canem and its poets have changed the face of American poetry.

Curator: Nancy Kuhl

Image: Cave Canem fellows, Summer Retreat, 1999. Photo by John Griebsch. Cave Canem Records, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Image: © John Griebsch