Living by the Rule: Contemporary meets Medieval reflects on the ‘rules’ that we live by today. Exploring the idea of routine and regulation, the exhibition vividly presents the richness and complexity of the dialogue between medieval experiments in a different way to live, and modern reflections upon how life is (and might yet be) organised.
Taking the Rule of St Benedict as its starting point, written in the 6th century, as a typical example of a guide for communal living, the exhibition brings together extraordinary objects from medieval monastic contexts – the Hatton Codex, the earliest copy of the Rule of St Benedict in the world, made in c. 700 AD; the Etheldreda Panels – one of only a handful of English medieval paintings to have survived the Reformation; and the Ormesby and Macclesfield psalters, the most important illuminated manuscripts of the 14th century – with contemporary works by artists including Andrea Büttner, Tacita Dean, Ingrid Pollard, Elizabeth Price and Lucy Skaer.
Living by the Rule: Contemporary meets Medieval is part of the Sainsbury Centre’s What is the Meaning of Life? exhibition season. It is curated by Dr Jessica Barker FSA, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art History at The Courtauld and Dr Ed Krčma, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of East Anglia.