Famine and flight, emigration and immigration, foreignness: these are some of the societal issues touched upon by the anonymous author of the Bible’s Book of Ruth, whose titular character was a great-grandmother of King David and, in the Christian tradition, an ancestor of Jesus Christ. This exhibition celebrates the 2018 gift by Joanna S. Rose of the Joanna S. Rose Illuminated Book of Ruth to the Morgan.

The accordion-fold vellum manuscript, measuring nine inches tall and an amazing eighteen feet long, was designed and illuminated by New York artist Barbara Wolff, who worked on the project for two years (2015–17). The complete biblical text of the Book of Ruth is written in Hebrew on one side and in English on the other, the work of calligrapher Izzy Pludwinski. The Hebrew side features twenty colored illustrations and a continuous landscape, with accents and lettering in silver, gold, and platinum; the English side has forty images executed in black ink.

The Rose Book of Ruth is presented in conversation with twelve manuscripts, drawn from the Morgan’s holdings, that unfold the Christian traditions for illustrating the story of Ruth during the Middle Ages. Through the juxtaposition of the modern manuscript with these ancient works, which date from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and include three leaves from the Morgan’s famed Crusader Bible, the exhibition brings into focus the techniques of medieval illumination that inspired Wolff, as well as her inventive approach to iconography.