Dust-jacket design for the HobbitMarks of Genius presents some of the greatest achievements of human creativity, from the beginning of recorded information up to the industrial era, as preserved in the incomparable collections of Oxford University's Bodleian Library. The exhibition features approximately sixty rare and exceptional objects from diverse disciplines that serve as points of departure for exploring some of the fundamental meanings of genius.

The ways in which genius has been cultivated, recognized, and venerated will be explored through such works as early manuscripts of Euclid's Elementa and Gregory I's Regular Pastoralis, the oldest book written in English; an Arabic manuscript book of constellations; a unique papyri of Sappho's poems; the copyright deposit copy of Shakespeare's First Folio; a thirteenth-century manuscript of the Magna Carta; the definitive account of Aztec civilization; the manuscript of Handel's Messiah; J.R.R. Tolkien's drawings for The Hobbit; and Mary Shelley's manuscript draft of Frankenstein.

Marks of Genius travels exclusively to the Morgan before returning to the Bodleian Library to mark the opening of a new building devoted to its special collections. The opening date for this exhibition at the new Bodleian Weston Library is the 22nd March 2015.


Dates : 6 June 2014 - 14 September 2014

Location: The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York

http://genius.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/