The HMML Story
The director of the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at Saint John’s Abbey asked us to make one idea clear: the research and study of medieval manuscripts is a contemporary activity. We brought scholarly work into view, creating an inviting setting for research, teaching, and encounters with art.
Founded in the early 1960s in response to manuscript losses during both World Wars and fears of further destruction during the Cold War, HMML preserves physical manuscripts and more than half a million digital ones. It also houses Arca Artium, a collection of over 6,000 art objects spanning 3300 B.C. to our own time.
Located one to two stories below grade, the library presented a particular challenge: connecting its daily life to the world outside. We brought views of the surrounding Saint John’s Abbey forest into the reading room, classroom, seminar room, and curatorial spaces, connecting study and work to the changing landscape.
We used glass walls to make learning and scholarship visible. The classroom, seminar room, and scholars’ rooms beside the reading room and curators’ offices allow students and visitors to see research and teaching in progress. This openness also helps safeguard the collection by making the use of its materials observable.
Curators can follow scholars’ work and respond to requests for additional resources, drawing from the reference collection adjacent to the reading room or from secure storage with controlled access. The arrangement supports close collaboration between curators and scholars while maintaining oversight of collection materials.
We also maintained visual connections between curators and their support staff, while giving individual workrooms views of the surrounding forest. Slender glass partitions meet the exterior glazing, preserving those connections.
A browsing collection welcomes students, visitors, and scholars. We selected reading room chairs with arms wide enough to rest personal tablets, a small but deliberate expression of the director’s wish to make historic scholarship visibly contemporary.
Art from the Arca Artium collection is placed throughout the library, bringing objects from across the ages into everyday experience. Responding to the director’s brief, we brought visible scholarship, attentive stewardship, and connections to the forest into one coherent setting for research, teaching, and discovery.
The Study and Use of Medieval Manuscripts as a Contemporary Activity: the HMML Story.
