In 2005 the Morgan received a superb group of forty-three early-twentieth-century German and Austrian drawings through the bequest of Broadway lyricist Fred Ebb (1928-2004). Ebb began assembling his collection in the late 1960s following the success of Cabaret, the Broadway musical he co-wrote with composer John Kander in 1966. Ebb’s interest in German popular music of the twenties and thirties, reflected in Cabaret, which takes place in Berlin between the two wars, led him to collect art of the same period. Most of the drawings have not been publicly exhibited for nearly thirty years.

The bequest-which is shown in its entirety in From Berlin to Broadway-includes major works by Max Beckmann, Egon Schiele, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Oskar Kokoschka, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Most of the drawings and watercolors in the Ebb collection date from 1910 to 1925 when Expressionism dominated the avant-garde in Germany and Austria.

If Expressionist artists often addressed similar subjects, their styles, could, nonetheless, be widely divergent, ranging from the quickly sketched, angular forms of Kirchner’s strolling figures to the delicate and decorative line of Klimt’s nudes. Many drawing techniques-pencil, charcoal, ink as well as a concentration of watercolors-are represented in the exhibition .

The Ebb bequest constitutes a significant contribution to the Morgan’s collection of twentieth-century works on paper and further strengthens the museum’s commitment to building a representative collection of twentieth-century drawings.