Future Sponsorship Opportunities

Nov 2007-March 2008 - All Change: European Avant-Garde 1900-1937

In Autumn 2007 Eurostar will transfer its London terminal from Waterloo to St Pancras. To celebrate this major landmark in the regeneration of St Pancras the British Library will present a vibrant exhibition showcasing the creative revolution which shook Europe during the early decades of the 20th century. The Avant-Garde movement encompassed every type of creative output from visual art to literature and theatre to architecture. Through the British Library's own remarkable collection, complemented by loans from European museums and galleries, this highly visual exhibition will explore key factors which prompted this period of transformation (scientific discoveries, technological advances, movement of people, brutality of modern warfare) and demonstrate how we continue to see its impact on today's artists and writers.

April-October 2008 - How we got our Rights: from Magna Carta to Maastricht (working title)

Our rights as citizens and inhabitants of Britain are the result of a long and complex historical process, reaching back as far as the Norman Conquest. The process by which we secured our rights is recorded in a number of documents whose names we might know (Magna Carta, The Bill of Rights, Treaty of Union) but are not often seen. These celebrated documents together form the British constitution and this exhibition will bring them together for the first time - telling the story behind them, showing the people that struggled to secure them, and explaining why they still matter to us today. This exhibition will take an international perspective, prompting exploration of questions around citizenship, national identity and the nature of multicultural Britain today.

Nov 2008-March 2009 - Henry VIII: Man and Monarch

2009 marks 500 years since Henry VIII took the throne and to mark this important anniversary, historian and broadcaster David Starkey will guest-curate an exhibition at the British Library. The exhibition will examine the extraordinary transformations - personal and political, intellectual and religious, literary, aesthetic and linguistic - that took place in Henry's reign. It will do so using the astonishingly rich holdings of the British Library for at the heart of the British Library is Henry's own library: the books that he chose, read and annotated. These will be accompanied by loans - pictures, tapestry, armour, plate, jewellery and sculpture - from other national museums and collections to create an exhibition which is both visually stunning and offers a new insight into this Tudor monarch who continues to cast a spell over the public imagination 500 years after his accession.