Martin Luther Exhibit

Located on the first floor of the Anderson Library, just across the Washington Ave bridge on West Bank, there’s a small but fascinating exhibit filled with several hundred year old texts. If it hadn’t been for an email, I would never have known it existed. Martin Luther made history when he fought back against a corrupt church system. Several of his written works, along with many other printings, document the Reformation period.

I was really intrigued by the setup of the exhibit. It was colorful and caught the senses right away. Chamber music played, old looking columns were set up along one side of the wall, and works of art from some of the bibles were featured as life-size cardboard cutouts. My only critique is that the labels on each item could have been labeled a bit better. Had it not been for the curators showing us around, I would have had no idea what I was looking at… and I was looking at some very cool items.

One of my favorite parts of the exhibit were the personal touches that you could see on the items. There were notes written in the margins, and drawings filled in with watercolors. One question that a curator asked us stuck with me: How did painting in the bible make the stories come alive? In order to properly explore this question, I picked up the convenient Martin Luther coloring book on my way out.

Now I may have limited coloring skills (and a limited amount of colored pencils) but I’m pretty proud of this dragon monster. What I discovered was that the color brought new life to a black and white image. Color adds dimension and energy, it makes the story feel much more real. Part of the fun of coloring it in yourself is that you get to decide what it looks like. It makes the story more personal. I feel that people colored in their bibles in order to make the stories feel closer, and by extension, make them closer to God.

I enjoyed the exhibit much more than I was expecting I would. It was really fascinating to see how books and language and even handwriting have changed over the centuries. The fact that I was looking at a text that had influenced the lives of so many people was very moving. It was a cultural experience I would want to attend again.