The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College inaugurates its new state-of-the art venue with a groundbreaking exhibition, Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections, which charts nearly a millennium in the history of European painting. In collaboration with Harvard University’s Houghton Library and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, this three-venue exhibition features 260 bound volumes, single leaves, and cuttings from nineteen Boston-area libraries and museums. Beyond Words is the largest exhibition of medieval and Renaissance manuscripts and early printed books ever to take place in North America.

The exhibition provides a sweeping overview of the history of the book in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as well as a guide to its production, illumination, functions, and readership. Each venue highlights one of the three principal contexts for the production of books in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

With over 180 illuminations on display dating from the eleventh to sixteenth century, Manuscripts for Pleasure & Piety at the McMullen Museum focuses on lay readership and the place of books in medieval society. The Houghton Library features Manuscripts for Church & Cloister, and the Gardner presents Italian Renaissance Books.

The McMullen Museum is free and open to the public seven days a week with free docent tours every Sunday at 2:00 p.m. and free, private tours available upon request.