It was poignant to visit the British Library the same week as the death of its architect, Colin St John Wilson.
Arguably one of the successes of this still-controversial building is the publicly accessible exhibition space, offering a chance to view treasures from the British Library and elsewhere.
The latest exhibition, Sacred: Discover What We Share, presents some of the world's earliest surviving, most important and beautiful religious texts from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, and explores the means by which these sacred texts were transmitted over time.
Drawn both from the British Library's own collections - one of the best in the world - and with loans from museums and religious institutions in the UK, Sweden, Morocco, Uzbekistan and the US, the exhibition presents a stunning collection of sacred texts from the 3rd-century AD to the present day.
The texts from all three religions are treated together thematically, looking at the ways in which they have been produced, interpreted and used throughout history and in the present day. The exhibition is divided into sections, focusing on establishing the texts, worship, festivals and holy places.
Though the majority of works on display are books and manuscripts, there are also artefacts: Jewish spice boxes and menorah plaques, Christian crosses, crosiers and chalices, Muslim metal standards and amulets and, somewhat incongruously, Jemima Khan's gold silk shalwar kameez worn at her Muslim wedding to Imran Khan.
You are drawn initially to a central area shrouded with diaphanous curtains where three books - the Torah, the Bible and the Qu'ran - are displayed. Each is beautifully made, but what is fascinating is their provenance: the Torah is a 15th-century text from Lisbon, the Qu'ran a 14th-century text from Mosul in Iraq and the Bible a tenth-century text from Greece.
Further evidence of the way the three faiths transcend geographical borders is demonstrated by texts where the design has been influenced by the location in which they were made.
Both the early 16th-century Coptic Christian Book of Psalms from Egypt and the Jewish Pentateuch from San'a in Yemen show the strong influence of Islamic art, with elaborately decorated medallions and 'carpet' pages.
The texts are works of art in their own right, and their production was literally a labour of love and faith. Sultan Baybar's Qu'ran, all seven volumes written in gold, took three years to produce. The 12th-century Silos Apocalypse is an explosion of Christian book illustration, and the mid-14th-century Barcelona Haggadah is a feast of Jewish art, with imaginary animals crawling over every page.
Some of these volumes have undertaken epic journeys: the original copy of Caliph Uthman's Qu'ran was made in 650, taken to Samarkand by Tamurlane in the late 14th century, spent most of the 19th and 20th centuries in St Petersburg, and was finally returned to Tashkent in 1991.
But, awe-inspiring texts aside, this is a very confused exhibition and the design by Real Studios is downright odd. Who is the audience? What is it trying to achieve? There is a clunky approach to presenting information, with 3D labelled models of a church, a mosque and a synagogue and an electronic tickertape comparing the three religions, which suggests that schools are an important audience.
At the same time there is a heavy design element, with a white stripe running through the displays as a link and a cone of blue lights representing a Christmas tree. There is also a 'chill-out' seating area at the end, which features a video meditation on key texts, and is surrounded by white curtains.
Sacred is also very busy. The central display of the three key texts, distractingly, has scrolling images projected on the curtains surrounding it, and the exhibition, maddeningly, is plagued throughout by mood music.
One is tempted to ask 'Where has God gone?' Despite the strapline, the focus on this exhibition is not about what we share, beyond the fact that a sacred text is a fundamental part of each of the three religions.
It's very much about the tangible rather than the intangible: the rituals, the structure, the texts, the equipment of the three faiths.
But nowhere in the exhibition, unless you can read Arabic or Hebrew, can you actually read the words of the Qu'ran or the Torah.
I left the exhibition with no greater knowledge of the contents of either sacred text than when I arrived. The accom-panying exhibition catalogue has a different subtitle: Books of the Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and this would have made a much more accurate description of the exhibition as a whole.
Jane Weeks is a museum consultant
Project data
Cost: £320,000
Funders: The Co-Exist Foundation, the Moroccan British Society, Saint Catherine Foundation Exhibition design: Real Studios
Arguably one of the successes of this still-controversial building is the publicly accessible exhibition space, offering a chance to view treasures from the British Library and elsewhere.
The latest exhibition, Sacred: Discover What We Share, presents some of the world's earliest surviving, most important and beautiful religious texts from the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths, and explores the means by which these sacred texts were transmitted over time.
Drawn both from the British Library's own collections - one of the best in the world - and with loans from museums and religious institutions in the UK, Sweden, Morocco, Uzbekistan and the US, the exhibition presents a stunning collection of sacred texts from the 3rd-century AD to the present day.
The texts from all three religions are treated together thematically, looking at the ways in which they have been produced, interpreted and used throughout history and in the present day. The exhibition is divided into sections, focusing on establishing the texts, worship, festivals and holy places.
Though the majority of works on display are books and manuscripts, there are also artefacts: Jewish spice boxes and menorah plaques, Christian crosses, crosiers and chalices, Muslim metal standards and amulets and, somewhat incongruously, Jemima Khan's gold silk shalwar kameez worn at her Muslim wedding to Imran Khan.
You are drawn initially to a central area shrouded with diaphanous curtains where three books - the Torah, the Bible and the Qu'ran - are displayed. Each is beautifully made, but what is fascinating is their provenance: the Torah is a 15th-century text from Lisbon, the Qu'ran a 14th-century text from Mosul in Iraq and the Bible a tenth-century text from Greece.
Further evidence of the way the three faiths transcend geographical borders is demonstrated by texts where the design has been influenced by the location in which they were made.
Both the early 16th-century Coptic Christian Book of Psalms from Egypt and the Jewish Pentateuch from San'a in Yemen show the strong influence of Islamic art, with elaborately decorated medallions and 'carpet' pages.
The texts are works of art in their own right, and their production was literally a labour of love and faith. Sultan Baybar's Qu'ran, all seven volumes written in gold, took three years to produce. The 12th-century Silos Apocalypse is an explosion of Christian book illustration, and the mid-14th-century Barcelona Haggadah is a feast of Jewish art, with imaginary animals crawling over every page.
Some of these volumes have undertaken epic journeys: the original copy of Caliph Uthman's Qu'ran was made in 650, taken to Samarkand by Tamurlane in the late 14th century, spent most of the 19th and 20th centuries in St Petersburg, and was finally returned to Tashkent in 1991.
But, awe-inspiring texts aside, this is a very confused exhibition and the design by Real Studios is downright odd. Who is the audience? What is it trying to achieve? There is a clunky approach to presenting information, with 3D labelled models of a church, a mosque and a synagogue and an electronic tickertape comparing the three religions, which suggests that schools are an important audience.
At the same time there is a heavy design element, with a white stripe running through the displays as a link and a cone of blue lights representing a Christmas tree. There is also a 'chill-out' seating area at the end, which features a video meditation on key texts, and is surrounded by white curtains.
Sacred is also very busy. The central display of the three key texts, distractingly, has scrolling images projected on the curtains surrounding it, and the exhibition, maddeningly, is plagued throughout by mood music.
One is tempted to ask 'Where has God gone?' Despite the strapline, the focus on this exhibition is not about what we share, beyond the fact that a sacred text is a fundamental part of each of the three religions.
It's very much about the tangible rather than the intangible: the rituals, the structure, the texts, the equipment of the three faiths.
But nowhere in the exhibition, unless you can read Arabic or Hebrew, can you actually read the words of the Qu'ran or the Torah.
I left the exhibition with no greater knowledge of the contents of either sacred text than when I arrived. The accom-panying exhibition catalogue has a different subtitle: Books of the Faiths: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and this would have made a much more accurate description of the exhibition as a whole.
Jane Weeks is a museum consultant
Project data
Cost: £320,000
Funders: The Co-Exist Foundation, the Moroccan British Society, Saint Catherine Foundation Exhibition design: Real Studios
