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On the Edge: Medieval Margins and the Margins of Academic Life
Special Collections Research Center Exhibition Gallery
May 19, 2012 – August 10, 2012
2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art by University of Chicago art history professor Michael Camille (1958-2002). This groundbreaking work looked at the "lascivious apes, autophagic dragons, pot-bellied heads, harp-playing asses, arse-kissing priests and somersaulting jongleurs to be found protruding from the edges of medieval buildings and in the margins of illuminated manuscripts." Camille studied the uncommon: the strange, remarkable, and extraordinary images at the edges of the medieval world. Camille brought light to the confluence of the serious and the playful, the sacred and the profane.
This exhibit will feature marginalia in illuminated manuscripts from the Special Collections Research Center paired with photographs of life at the University of Chicago. The serious and the playful also converge here at the University, and the theme of this exhibit will be to explore the symmetry between the margins of academic life and medieval margins.
