English professor curates Bible exhibition
Hanniban Hamlin, associate professor, English, is co-curator of the Folger Shakespeare Library exhibition, Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible, opening at the Folger in Washington DC on September 23.
Through materials from the year 1000 to 2011, Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible offers a "biography" of one of the world's most famous books, the King James Bible of 1611, which marks its 400th anniversary this year. The exhibition tells the story of this landmark book through a remarkable assemblage of rare books, manuscripts, and works of art, including the Folger's own first edition of the 1611 King James Bible. Through these materials, Hamlin and co-curator Steven Galbraith trace the centuries-long narrative of the King James Bible and the English Bibles that came before it.
The exhibition also includes fragments of an extremely rare translation of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament,by William Tyndale that are in the Ohio State Rare Books collection.
The exhibition is funded by a major grant received by Hamlin from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).