Breaking the Rules at the British Library

The British Library opened a new exhibition today called Breaking the Rules which runs until 30 March 2008. It looks at the Avant Garde movement in Europe during the first four decades of the 20th century and the exhibition uses the British Library’s unique collection of literary manuscripts, sound recordings, flyers, posters, manifestos, artists books and photobooks from around the continent to tell the story.

Avant Garde describes people who are at the forefront of doing something new especially in art, culture or politics and the areas covered by Breaking the Rules include Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism and the things they have in common. As the national library of Britain and housed in a building next to St Pancras Station, the British Library is well worth a visit in its own right, containing two copies of the Magna Carta, some of the earliest Bibles, Korans and other religious texts as well as notebooks and writings by Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Galileo, Sir Issac Newton, Captain Cook, Mozart and Beethoven among the 150 million items that it stores.

The British Library is open daily and admission is free. The hours are Mon, Wed, Thurs, Fri 9.30am-6pm, Tues 9.30am-8pm, Sat-Sun 9.30am-5pm and 11am-5pm. Breaking the Rules is in the library’s Pearson Gallery and Kings Cross is the nearest Tube.