Paradise Imagined: The Garden in the Islamic and Christian World

Third Floor Manuscript Gallery
Free

This exhibition explores the art of gardens and the cross-fertilization of garden imagery between the East and West. Gardens have functioned as spaces of invention, imagination and mythmaking, as well as places of repose and recreation, for different cultures across time. Through a journey into the intimate gardens on the pages of approximately 22 illustrated herbals, poetry, epic and sacred texts from the Walters’ collection of manuscripts and rare books, the exhibition focuses on the transmission, exchange and assimilation of garden imagery and metaphors between the Islamic and Christian worlds in the late medieval and early modern eras. This show will address the image of the garden as an expression of love, power, philosophy, spirituality, knowledge, and the interactive and often performative dimension of imaginary gardens evoked through word and image.