Q&A: Meet the Curators of The Saint John’s Bible Gallery New Exhibition at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota
Collegeville, MN – In the summer of 2025, two Saint John’s University students—junior Aaron Frier and senior Eamon Cavanaugh—served as curators of the 2025-2026 exhibition of The Saint John’s Bible original manuscript at Saint John’s University (SJU).
Both interns approached the work from different lenses, which reflected their individual academic backgrounds: Frier, an art major from Red Wing, Minnesota, is exploring textiles, quilting, and contemporary expressions of gender identity and sexuality through his practice, while Eamon, a history major from Oak Park, Illinois, is preparing for a career in public history and museum programming.
What unites these two students is their passionate intellectual spirit, deep empathy, and open curiosity, which they’ve both brought to the exhibition, called Justice Through Community.
In the following Q&A, Cavanaugh and Frier share what they’ve learned from working with the Bible, and why they believe its illuminations offer powerful insight into our world today.
Eamon Cavanaugh, Senior at Saint John’s University
Q: Tell me about yourself. Where are you from and what are you studying?
Cavanaugh: My name is Eamon Cavanaugh. I’m from Oak Park, Illinois. I’m a cross-country runner and a history major, and I’m particularly interested in public history. This is my second summer now working full-time with The Saint John’s Bible. I worked throughout the school year as well, giving tours of the previous exhibition.
Q: From a historian’s lens, how do you approach your work with The Saint John’s Bible?
Cavanaugh: It’s been a great journey of discovery. From the tours I’ve given, I’ve seen that what really captures audiences is the fact that this university, this place, chose to turn back the clock and use technologies and an art form that has subsided for 500 years now, since the invention of the printing press. That means something to the historian in me.
It’s fascinating to learn about those processes, the meaning that handwritten text had for monasteries and for culture in general. To learn that history by working with The Saint John’s Bible is fascinating to me.
In many ways, the artists and the people behind The Saint John’s Bible were working with this historical document to make it relevant for a contemporary audience, which is such a fascinating idea; to take something that we have experienced and seen and read so many different times, throughout history, and to reinvigorate it, to recreate it for contemporary audiences, is really interesting to me.
Q: What has your experience giving tours of The Saint John’s Bible exhibition been like?
Cavanaugh: What has continued to surprise me and make the work so worthwhile and compelling is that every single time I bring someone in, or we discuss an illumination, I always hear something new. There’s always something that someone has never said to me before, or that I have never considered about an illumination.
We can read the books. We can know the facts of its creation. But when it comes to looking at an illumination, I am always in the same boat as those on the tour. Aaron and I might lead the discussion, but we all approach it through different lenses, with different ideas. The beauty of these illuminations is that they don’t prescribe a certain takeaway or a certain way of seeing the world. What they do is they force you to consider your beliefs.
Q: Together, you and Frier curated this year’s exhibition of The Saint John’s Bible at SJU. What do you hope visitors get out of the exhibition?
Cavanaugh: When we were designing the exhibition and writing questions to accompany the pages: we weren’t looking to tell anyone anything. We want visitors to be able to consider what they believe. Hopefully, they can have a conversation about what they believe and can learn something from themselves and from each other too.
Q: In what other ways do your passions or studies relate to your work with The Saint John’s Bible?
Cavanaugh: After graduation, I’d like to go into museum programming. In a time of great divide, it’s important that we have discussions about our history, and do so in a responsible way, because whether we think about it all the time or not, history is always influencing our decisions today. People always say that those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it. Being here has opened my eyes towards art as a vehicle for historical education.
Aaron Frier, Junior at Saint John’s University
Q: Tell me about yourself. Where are you from and what are you studying?
Frier: My name is Aaron Frier. I’m from Red Wing, Minnesota, heading into my junior year at Saint John’s University. I’m majoring in studio art and minoring in creative writing.
Q: From an artist’s perspective, how do you approach your work with The Saint John’s Bible?
Frier: I work mostly in sculpture and in textiles, but even though illumination, calligraphy, and manuscript writing are not my mediums, there’s still a lot of interest and intrigue in it for me, especially in the process of how these artworks came about, how all these people worked together to make this piece of art that is The Saint John’s Bible.
Working in a gallery has been super interesting and fun to explore. Working with original documents, handling them, installing them, and curating an exhibition is something that I hadn’t done before, but I have found to be super rewarding.
Q: What has your experience giving tours of The Saint John’s Bible exhibition been like?
Frier: Sharing The Saint John’s Bible with others has been one of my favorite parts of the internship. Last week I gave a tour for residents of a nearby nursing home. Sometimes the visitors are academics just passing through campus for a conference or event. Sometimes it’s students and parents. One time, it was a choir group coming through town. Everyone gets something out of the experience.
Something that is emphasized through the Bible, is that everything we do is meant to be a communal practice. It’s meant to be shared and to have discussions about it, and in some ways, even disagreements.
A lot of the Bible’s images are more abstract and untraditional, which in a way makes it easier to have thought-provoking discussions, because it’s less representational of any one idea, and allows people to have their own interpretations.
Q: In what other ways do your passions or studies relate to your work with The Saint John’s Bible?
Frier: My current passions and aspirations lie in making my own art. Textiles and quilting are some recent explorations and fascinations of mine. Especially in quilting, I’m interested in exploring a very traditional practice with new approaches to combining textiles. Printmaking is also something I’ve been working with recently. No matter the medium, my work explores ideas of expression of gender identity and sexuality. This work with The Saint John’s Bible has also inspired me to look into arts education, something I hadn’t considered before.
The Saint John’s Bible: Ignite the Spiritual Imagination.
The exhibition will remain on view through June 2026. To visit the gallery and find its hours, click here.
To read more stories similar to this one, visit the blog on www.saintjohnsbible.org and subscribe to the e-newsletter, Sharing the Word.
Click here to listen to Frier and Cavanaugh speak about the exhibition.