Current Maughan Library exhibition
Medievalist visions
The Weston Room
Maughan Library
Chancery Lane
London WC2A 1LR
Wednesday 30 January - Wednesday 22 May 2013
Opening hours: Monday - Saturday, 09.30 - 17.00
This exhibition explores how the art and literature of the Middle Ages, as well as medieval events, ideas and people, have been represented in the visual and material culture of post-medieval Britain and Europe. It draws on material from across the disciplines of art and design, literature, theatre, cinema and architecture to explore ideas of historical authenticity, cultural translation and appropriation, and the formation and subversion of cultural and historical, personal and political, identities.
The exhibition contains material from the College’s Foyle Special Collections Library, as well as items lent by the Geffrye Museum, Lambeth Palace Library, Senate House Library and the Victoria and Albert Museum, and also includes a selection of specially commissioned works by young artists. Items on display include a copy of William Morris's Kelmscott Press edition of The history of Reynard the Foxe, a pair of gloves worn by Laurence Olivier in the 1944 production of Richard III, a trial edition of Tennyson's Idylls of the King with corrections in the poet's own hand and a Victorian set of child's building blocks which can be assembled to form a Gothic cathedral.
Medievalist visions is a collaboration between the Foyle Special Collections Library, the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies and the Department of English, and is housed in the Maughan Library’s dedicated exhibition space, the Weston Room, which is itself a Victorian construction superimposed on the medieval site of the Rolls Chapel and Henry III’s Domus Conversorum.
If you are coming from outside King's, you are advised to contact Special Collections staff on 020 7848 1843 or visit our web pages for the latest exhibition news before you travel.
Admission and access
Access to the exhibition is free. On arrival at the Maughan Library, please follow the signs to the Weston Room. Please note that visitors who are not registered members of the Maughan Library are required to complete an exhibition ticket on arrival at the Library. The exhibition ticket is available to print below, where you will also find a guide to the exhibition. Copies of the guide are available to take away in the Weston Room.