Walking Tour: Rembrandt’s Lions: Art and Exile in the Dutch Republic at the Morgan Library & Museum

Rembrandt’s Lions: Art and Exile in the Dutch Republic, running October 23, 2026 through January 31, 2027, highlights the often overlooked presence of migrants, immigrants, exiles, and refugees in Rembrandt’s  drawings, etchings, and paintings, emphasizing the impact of migration on seventeenth-century life. At that time, up to sixty percent of residents in Amsterdam hailed from elsewhere as the result, in part, of the country's reputation religious and political tolerance. The lion was a symbol for the fledgling republic’s people and lands; Rembrandt’s etchings, often in the context of stories about exile, refuge, and migration, reveal the many different lions that irrevocably shaped the nature of Dutch identity.