Education and Science, Forum, Latvia

Photo: lnb.lv

The exhibition has brought together 80 rare books from libraries around Europe, all of which have one thing in common – they were printed in 1514. The books each tell a story about where they come from, about society and people at the time, about their meaning, and people’s relationships with them, providing a unique insight into the cultural richness and diversity of the age.

The aim of the “1514. Book. 2014.” exhibition is to provide insight into the culture, politics and mentality of the society 500 years ago, focusing on people’s personal relationships with the written word and the world around them.

The concept of one’s own, expressing the significance of material, intellectual and spatial possession in human life, is a guiding motif in this exhibition as book-reading demands solitude and withdrawal from the world, and while reading the book and the reader become each other’s own, consuming one another in the process.

Through the books printed 500 year ago, the exhibition demonstrates how the people of the sixteenth century perceived and felt the world around them. At the same time the exhibition is highly modern with climate and dust controlled display cases, which preserve these historic books, and the employment of digital technologies which get past the un-exhibitable nature of books and enable visitors to flip through every page, providing windows into the past, while asking questions about the importance of books and book making, and the relationship between reader and book today.

This is the first exhibition housed in the Latvian National Library, and was opened on 1 July by the President of Latvia, Andris Bērziņš, and the President of Austria, Heinz Fisher, marking the fact that the National Library of Austria loaned the most books to the unique exhibition.