An Exhibition of Some of
the First Books Printed

This Sacred Art: The Emergence of the Printed Book in Fifteenth-Century Europe
Books printed before 1501 are known as incunabula, meaning “in the cradle” of the printing press era. Contemporaneous accounts praised the advent of printing because books could be produced quicker, cheaper, and more accurately. More recently, scholars have described the introduction of printing in Europe as revolutionary because of the role it played in distributing and standardizing knowledge. This exhibition explores how printed books were made, decorated, and bound, as well as their content, the book trade, and the enduring influence of incunabula in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

All Upcoming Occurrences