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Did you know only 2 percent of our collection is on view at any given time?

This Halloween, we’ve pulled out some of our spookiest artworks, from the ghoulish to the darkly funny to the outright bizarre.

Discover terrifying treasures from Hieronymous Bosch, William Blake, Edvard Munch, and Andy Warhol—plus lesser-known artists who brilliantly captured ghosts, witches, vampires, and monsters. These works are sure to send shivers down your spine.

Andy Warhol, Halloween, 1949

Antonio Reynoso, El Fantasma (Ghost), 1944

Nathan Lerner, Eye and Barbed Wire, 1939

Deborah Luster, Denise Howard, St. Gabriel, Louisiana, October 27, 2000

Edvard Munch, Geschrei (The Scream), 1895

Various Artists, Bogeyman Comics #3 (red cover), Published 1970

Leopoldo Méndez, The Symphonic Concert of Skeletons, 1943

Hans Lützelburger after Hans Holbein the Younger, Skeletons Making Music, c. 1526, download image

Allen Ginsberg, The Ballad of the Skeletons, 1996

 

 

Max Slevogt, Witches' Dance, 1903

Matsumi Kanemitsu, Monday's Witch, 1970

Albrecht Dürer, Witch Riding on a Goat, c. 1500/1501, download image

Graham Sutherland, Ram's Head (with rocks and skeletons), 1968

Hyman Bloom, Fish Skeletons, c. 1956

Edvard Munch, The Vampire (Vampyr), 1895

Luigi Schiavonetti after William Blake, The Skeleton Re-animated, 1808 and 1813, download image

Rosa Bonheur, The Legend of the Wolves, 1890s, download image

Gertrude Käsebier, The Bat, 1902, download image

A naked man with ghostly white skin sits upright in a canopied bed set in a narrow room in this tall, vertical painting. Wearing a black cap, he looks to our left in profile toward a skeleton who comes through a door along the left edge of the composition. The man gestures at the skeleton with one hand and, with the other, toward a bag of money held up by a small demon next to the bed to our left. The skeleton wears a white shroud and holds an arrow. A winged angel kneels next to the man in the bed, one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other lifted to gesture at a crucifix hanging in the window over the door. A small devil on the canopy above looks down onto the bed. At the foot of the bed, a man wearing a green robe and headdress drops coins into a sack held by another demon. Three more demons crawl about and hide under the chest. Pieces of armor and weapons lie on the ground to the right in front of a stone ledge in the foreground. Two pieces of clothing drape over the ledge to our left.

Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, c. 1485/1490, download image

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October 27, 2022