"Language, Decipherment, and Translation – from Then to Now"
February 29 - May 11, 2024
Language, Decipherment, and Translation celebrates the role of books and related objects in transferring information and knowledge through time. Inspired by the recent 200th anniversary of the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone (1822), the exhibition is curated by Grolier Club member Deirdre Lawrence and features work from her personal collection of approximately 2,000 books and prints. More than 50 books, collages, prints, and scrolls on view focus on communication through a variety of languages—some recognized and some invented—ranging from hieroglyphs to translations of classic folktales such as
The Thousand and One Nights and other forms of storytelling. Highlights include early attempts at decipherment of hieroglyphs including
Hieroglyphica (1594) by Pierio Valerianus and the
Mensa Isiaca (1670) by Lorenzo Pignoria, as well as contemporary works such as
Marginalia 1 (2013) by Islam Aly,
A Universal Lexicon (2018) by Sarah Hulsey, and
Codex Seraphinianus (2020) by Luigi Serafini.
*Photo from
Language, Decipherment, and Translation: Card from the Brooklyn Museum Catalog representing an item in the Wilbour Library of Egyptology, c. 1917. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives.
The exhibition is also available online.