Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections

Date: 

Monday, September 12, 2016 (All day) to Monday, January 16, 2017 (All day)

Location: 

Harvard Houghton Library, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and Boston College McMullen Museum

The first exhibition to showcase highlights of medieval and Renaissance illumination in the Boston area, hosted at Harvard's Houghton Library ("Manuscripts for Church and Cloister"), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum ("Italian Renaissance Books"), and Boston College's McMullen Museum of Art ("Manuscripts for Pleasure and Piety"). Featuring more than 250 outstanding manuscripts and printed books dating from the ninth to seventeenth centuries from eighteen Boston-area repositories, including: the Armenian Museum and Library of America; the Boston Athenaeum; John J. Burns Library, Boston College; McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; School of Theology Library, Boston University; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Boston Public Library; Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections, Brandeis University; Historical and Special Collections, Harvard University Law School; Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library, Harvard University Medical School; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Andover-Harvard Theological Library of the Harvard University Divinity School; Baker Library, Harvard University Business School; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; Institute Archives and Special Collections, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Snell Library, Northeastern University; Tisch Library Special Collections, Tufts University; and Archives and Special Collections, Wellesley College. The exhibition is curated by Jeffrey Hamburger and William Stoneman (Harvard University), Nancy Netzer (Boston College), Lisa Fagin Davis (The Medieval Academy of America) and Anne-Marie Eze (The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), with an exhibition catalog distributed by the University of Chicago Press. For further information, please visit the exhibit website here.