Washington DC (continued)
'Let There Be Light', the British Library's Tyndale exhibition, closed in Washington DC on 6 September 1997. In the twelve weeks it had been in the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill, publicity outside the Jefferson Building, in the media and on the Internet had brought very many visitors every day. By the end, it had been seen there by 100,000 visitors. The Library of Congress staff told me that they were very sad to have to dismantle it.
Taking conservative figures for the numbers of visitors - in Bloomsbury in 1994-95 (42,000), in the Huntington Library in California in 1996-97 (32,000), in New York in 1997 (120,000), and in Washington DC in 1997 (100,000) -- we find the remarkable total of 274,000. That is to say, well over a quarter of a million people travelled to pay homage to William Tyndale in this way. Carroll Johnson at the Library of Congress staff telephoned to tell me, at the end, that a number of people had made a point of seeing the exhibition in all three of the American locations.
The Trustees of the Tyndale Society acknowledge here their particular gratitude to the British Library for donating to the Society the ten large panels that were so much a feature of the exhibition wherever it was (except in New York). It is hoped that they will stay for a while in the USA, for use with local Tyndale exhibitions.
Anybody wishing to use them for such an event should contact the Society Secretary, Mrs Priscilla Frost.
David Daniell