This publication records more than three years of collaboration between the Henry Moore Institute and the British Museum, which resulted in exhibitions on inscriptions, unidentified objects, masks and magic. Curators Stephen Feeke (Henry Moore Institute) and James Putman (The British Museum) introduce the collaboration as a whole, before moving on to more detailed essays on each of the four exhibitions:

The Sculpted Word: Inscriptions from the British Museum – This exhibition examined the art of inscribing as a sculptural process, involving carving, making or engraving words or pictograms, in varying degrees of relief and often in durable materials.

Unidentified Museum Objects: Curiosities from the British Museum – when the experts are unable to confirm what something is, colour, texture, shape and material seem more noticeable; and moreover, we are free to speculate for ourselves.

Changing Face: Masks from the British Museum – with an almost universal distribution around the world, and in existence since Palaeolithic times, masking is fundamental to notions of identity and society.

A Kind of Magic: Talismans, charms and amulets from the British Museum – from the earliest time… the belief in potent objects has become near universal and, in a diluted form, can still be witnessed today at the core of superstitious behaviours.

Published to commemorate the exhibition ‘The Sculpted World: Inscriptions from the British Museum’, Henry Moore Institute, 2001.