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UH Library Hosts Medieval Exhibit - Lustre
Posted: September 30, 2005
Graduate students from the University of Houston Department of History have helped organize Lustre: Spiritual Treasures and Sensory Pleasures, an exhibit of Medieval Texts and Images at the M.D. Anderson Library of the University of Houston. Exhibit materials are drawn from collections around Houston. The exhibit will be in place from October 20, 2005 to February 17, 2006.
This exhibit highlights medieval illuminated manuscripts from the University of Houston Libraries along with manuscripts loaned by other local public and private collections. The manuscripts represent a wide range of medieval book types, including sacred Christian books serving liturgical, devotional, and scholarly purposes; Jewish and Moslem religious books; legal and medical books; and popular literature of the period. The exhibit also features works made by University of Houston art students in response to medieval manuscripts. Copies of original medieval tools and materials are displayed, to illustrate how medieval manuscripts were made. All of these objects are meant to delight the eye and to make the University of Houston and larger Houston public aware of the treasures that can be found right here, in our own community.
The exhibit is organized in part around the topics of Secular Books, Books for Scholars, Books for Personal Devotion, and Liturgical Books. Other themes include the making of medieval manuscripts and ideas about the nature and significance of the book in the Middle Ages (the period generally defined as 500 C.E. through the fifteenth century in northern Europe). One of these themes is the way text was understood and used in the Middle Ages as a kind of image ( Text as Image ). Another theme of the exhibit is the treatment of some books and book covers as material or spiritual treasures ( Books as Treasure ). For the interested viewer, a catalog with essays on topics related to the exhibit is available (free of charge).
UH History graduate students involved in the project are: Holle Canatella (Ph.D. student), Sarah Pruett (MA student), Luke Horby (MA student), Elizabeth Walen Walunas (Ph.D. student), and Amy O Neal (Ph.D. student).
For video presentations related to the exhibit, visit: www.coe.uh.edu/manuscripts.
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