Media Release
Precious European manuscripts bound for Melbourne
29 March 2007
Cambridge University and the State Library of Victoria are delighted to announce a collaboration that will bring some of Europe’s oldest and rarest illuminated manuscripts to Melbourne in a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition - The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand.
Professor Alison Richard, Vice Chancellor, Cambridge University will personally announce the collaborative exhibition at the State Library of Victoria this Friday 30 March at 4.30pm.
This unique exhibition will feature almost 50 stunning illuminated manuscripts, books and pages from the collections of the Fitzwilliam Museum, the University Library, Trinity College and Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University. This will be the first and, possibly only, time these manuscripts will travel to Australia - many have not left the University since they were first placed in the collections. They will join a similar number of precious books from Libraries, Galleries and Museums in Australia and New Zealand to create the largest exhibition of its kind ever held in Australia.
Among the manuscripts coming to Melbourne is the extraordinary early eighth-century Gospels of St Luke and St John, which pre-dates the Book of Kells, and is one of the oldest surviving books made in Britain and the oldest book ever to cross the equator.
Emeritus Professor Margaret Manion AO, Professorial Fellow in Art History Melbourne University, is the guest curator of the exhibition. She believes The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand is the most ambitious exhibition of its kind ever mounted in this part of the world.
‘This is an extraordinary collaboration and a major logistical undertaking for the State Library, Cambridge University and other participating institutions. The manuscripts coming to Melbourne are priceless and irreplaceable. Because of their fragile nature we may never see works like this in Australia again,’ she said
John Cain, President of the Library Board of Victoria, stressed the unique opportunity this collaboration presents. ‘We are very privileged to be the one institution in the Southern Hemisphere to show these remarkable chronicles of the culture, beliefs and society of Medieval Western Europe. That our State Library will host this exhibition with loans from four Cambridge collections and thirteen collections in Australia and New Zealand honours us and demonstrates the goodwill that exists between these great institutions,’ he said.
The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand will open at the State Library of Victoria in March 2008 to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the founding of Cambridge University.
Media inquiries and image requests
Matthew van Hasselt
Media relations coordinator
State Library of Victoria
Tel 03 8664 7263
Email mvanhasselt@slv.vic.gov.au
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