University of Melbourne Special Collections: Exhibitions

Exhibitions

Current Exhibition

Adventure & Art

the fine press book from 1450 to 2011

an exhibition at the Baillieu Library
the University of Melbourne
March to May 2012

Leigh Scott Gallery, Level 1, Baillieu Library, 1 March to 27 May 2012

Adventure & Art, curated by poet and fine press printer Alan Loney, is about the printer’s craft, evidenced from the first printed books in the 15th century, and given a hugely influential impetus by William Morris and the Arts & Craft movement at the end of the 19th. This exhibition will show how a number of technologies that are obsolete in commercial terms are still current in creative & craft terms in the 21st century. Exhibited will be books from the Baillieu Special Collections from Europe, North America, New Zealand and Australia.

Forthcoming exhibitions

Knowledge Through Print: A Melbourne Perspective

Leigh Scott Gallery, Level 1, Baillieu Library, 8 June to 2 September 2012

To coincide with the Cultural Treasures Festival, the University Library’s Special Collections will provide the books for an exhibition which re-visits the renowned Printing and the Mind of Man exhibition, which was held in London in 1963. Curated by Wallace Kirsop and Louise Box, the exhibition will showcase a selection of items from the 1963 exhibition and feature some items which perhaps should have been included in that exhibition. The exhibition will complement the 2012 ANZAAB Australian Antiquarian Book Fair which is being held in the University of Melbourne’s splendid Wilson Hall. The exhibition will run from June to August 2012.

The original 1963 exhibition was presented alongside the eleventh International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition, and aimed to show the printing industry its own historical evolution while reminding the general public what western civilisation owes to print. The exhibition’s purpose was to display the technical progress of printing as a craft, the finest achievements of printing as an art, and the impact of printing on the mind of Western man since its invention. The invention of printing with moveable type was crucial to the development of western civilisation, and the importance of Johann Gutenberg’s invention cannot be underestimated. The spread of printing throughout Europe was rapid and by the end of the 15th century all the major states had at least one important publishing centre. Fittingly, the University of Melbourne’s exhibition—like the 1963 exhibition–will open with an example of the 42-line Bible, the first book produced with moveable type.