Please see Cartography - Calendar of
Exhibitions for a current calendar of exhibitions.
Click
here for archive of past exhibitions.
March 26, 2011 – January 1, 2013 –
Williamsburg
More than Meets the Eye: Maps and Prints of
Early America is at the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum,
326 West Francis Street. The exhibition features 35 maps, portraits,
and other graphic images that invite the viewer to look more deeply
into the subtle messages delivered by artisans depicting America. In
addition to objects from the Colonial Williamsburg collections, the
exhibition includes an outstanding documentary source for the 1920s
restoration of the historic town—the “Frenchman’s”
map, loaned by the College of William and Mary. The Connecticut
Historical Society has also kindly agreed to loan their copy of Abel
Buell’s "A New and correct Map of the United States of
America,” the first map of the thirteen states to be published
after the Congress of the Confederation ratified the treaty on
January 14, 1784. Two programs in conjunction with the exhibit "Focus
on Maps" and "Maps and Migration" will offer a closer
look at specific types of maps. "Focus on Maps" will
feature rare and important 17th and 18th century American maps. That
program will be offered at 2:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. on Mondays from
April 4-June 6. "Maps and Migration" will show
transatlantic migration routes in British North America during a
guided tour of the 17th and 18th century maps. That tour will be held
at 4 p.m. on Thursdays May 5-June 9.
October 29, 2012 - January 1,
2013 - Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cartographic
Grounds: Projecting the Landscape Imaginary uses maps to
show old and new drawing techniques. Sections of an old map of
Switzerland employs hachures - short lines used to depict an
incline’s degree of slope. The show, on view at Gund Hall,
Harvard Graduate School of Design , 48 Quincy, is also meant to give
students a sense of the aesthetics that have been vividly present in
cartography for centuries, but that may be muted in an age of 3-D
representations of space. Curator Jill Desimini stood between a
13th-century map of the British Isles, on which settlements were
marked with castles, and a flickering video made last month that
stacked layers of geographic data. In defense of the modern age, she
said, “It’s much more challenging to make something that
has to work at so many different scales.” For those who are not
students, Cartographic Grounds still has immense appeal,
beginning with those aesthetics. “You can be immersed in a lot
of beautiful maps and a lot of beautiful drawings,” said
Desimini. Viewers can simply marvel at the rich lexicon of the ways
that maps are organized and drawn. Within the idea of subsurface
inventions, for instance, is the familiar stratigraphic column
depicting layers of rock. This was a revolutionary idea in 1815, when
William Smith published the first nation-scale geological map,
depicting the fossil-rich subsurface layers that created Britain’s
contours. Add to that the cross section, a mapping convention so
familiar that it is now all but invisible. The exhibit includes a
whimsical view of a South American mountain, with a verdant outer
layer on one side and a mountain of words on the other. This is an
1802 botanical map by Alexander von Humboldt, meant to show how plant
distribution was affected by elevation. The rest of the show offers
lavishly illustrated lessons. There are the line symbols and
conventional signs of temporal cartography, where precision
overwhelms the need to show how a place looks from the air. A Federal
Aviation Administration map of Los Angeles, for instance, replaces
the look of a place to reflect the first imperative of air travel:
Know where the ground is. In maps of the aqueous world, there are
soundings and isobaths and spot elevations, including a water-depth
map of a Dutch river in the 1730s. Then there are the hachures,
shaded relief, and other conventions used to depict the terrestrial
landscape. Quite logically, this is the biggest part of the exhibit,
because ground maps have dominated cartography from the beginning.
This is also the area of cartography where the past most strikingly
meets the future. There are maps painstakingly mapped on foot by a
surveyor. And there are maps derived from satellite technology,
including a video display that allows the viewer to “fly”
across the world at a bird’s-eye level.
November 30, 2012 – January 6, 2013 - Valletta, Malta
In
the beginning of the 19th century Baron Charles Frederick Von
Brocktorff (1775-1850) moved to Malta from Schleswig Holstein in
Germany. He lived in Valletta and he and his wife had 12 children. He
opened a gallery selling paintings and maps made by him and four of
his sons. His business was very successful. The Malta Map Society, in
collaboration with Heritage Malta, will sponsor an exhibition The
Brocktorff Mapmakers. The exhibition will be held at the Museum
of Fine Arts, South Street, and a catalog will be issued. Additional
information from Rod Lyon.
October 20, 2012 - January 13, 2013 - Loveland, Colorado
Civil
War: Maps, Money and Memories can be seen in the Loveland
Museum/Gallery, 503 N. Lincoln Ave. Exhibit shows Civil War
fractional currency and maps Dave Cole has collected.
November 11, 2012 – January 13, 2013 - Göttingen,
Germany
The year 2012 marks 250 years since the death of
Tobias Mayer. Mr. Mayer became a highly regarded mathematician,
cartographer, and astronomer in the mid-1700s. He worked for the
Homann family for several years. An exhibition illustrating aspects
of his works, including maps made by him while working for the
Homanns, can bee seen at Niedersächsische Staats- und
Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Platz der Göttinger
Sieben 1.
November 27, 2012 – January
20, 2013 - Galloway, New Jersey
The
Richard E. Bjork Library at Richard Stockton College, 101 Vera King
Farris Drive, is hosting Surveying South Jersey, an exhibit of
maps and artifacts representing the region in the mid-19th century.
The display’s centerpiece is a beautifully restored Smith &
Wistar map of Salem and Gloucester counties. The map measures 4.8
feet in width and 3.4 feet in depth and is water colored by hand. It
is near the library’s reference desk. An accompanying
exhibition, by two recent Stockton graduates, Nick Leonetti and James
Pomar, describes New Jersey map-making at mid-nineteenth century, and
gives a brief background on the two counties. The collection also
includes a group of large Atlases containing maps of the Southern New
Jersey coast, Philadelphia and what is now Camden County and Monmouth
County, among other areas.
September 13, 2012 - January 21, 2013 - New York
Through
maps, photographs, newspapers, government documents, and original
artifacts, visitors will encounter Staten Island’s historical
transformation and its changing roles as a farming center, as a rural
retreat, as the site of rapidly residential communities, as a center
for industry, and as an increasingly dense urban environment. From
Farm to City: Staten Island 1661-2012 will also enable visitors
to explore current debates about land preservation, environmental
sustainability, and redevelopment on the island, including through a
special case study of the Fresh Kills landfill redevelopment. The
exhibition can be seen at Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth
Avenue.
October 4, 2012 - January 27, 2013 - Victoria, British
Columbia
Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps,
1472-1700, can be seen at Royal BC Museum, 675 Belleville Street.
This collection of the earliest printed maps of the world reveals the
rapidly unfolding understanding of geography and our place in the
universe from the early Renaissance through the scientific Age of
Enlightenment. The 30 rare and stunning maps, drawn from the
extensive Wendt collection, also portray the first attempts to come
to grips with the shape, size, and nature of the Earth and our solar
system. One map from the Royal BC Museum’s historic map
collection in the BC Archives will be on exhibit. Dated from 1696,
the illuminated double-hemisphere view of the world is adapted and
redrawn from the original work of the important French cartographer
Nicholas Sanson (1600-1667). It provides a fascinating look at how
European mapmakers of the time viewed the North Pacific with mythical
wonder and scanty facts. The exhibition is accompanied by a beautiful
104-page catalogue available for purchase from the Royal Museum Shop.
October 23, 2012 – January 27, 2013 – Paris
An
exhibition on Portolan charts from the thirteenth to the eighteenth
century will be at the Bibliothèque nationale de France,
François-Mitterrand site, Grand Galerie. For additional
information contact cartes.plans@bnf.fr.
October 1, 2012 – February 9, 2013 - Arlington, Texas
An
exhibit at University of Texas Arlington Library’s Special
Collections, 702 Planetarium Place, titled Pearls of the Antilles:
Printed Maps of Caribbean Islands, features over seventy maps and
prints, drawn solely from the collections at UT Arlington.
August 24, 2012 - February 10, 2013 – Princeton
First
X, Then Y, Now Z: Landmark Thematic Maps is the title of an
exhibition in Main Gallery, Firestone Library. This exhibition
introduces viewers to the early history of thematic mapping—the
topical layering (Z) of geographic space (X-Y)—through both
quantitative and qualitative examples. On display will be early, if
not the earliest, thematic maps in various disciplines, such as
meteorology, geology, hydrography, natural history, medicine, and
sociology/economics. In some cases the maps literally changed the
world in the sense that new scientific avenues of investigation
resulted. Also, a selection of more fanciful, “theme”
maps, on literary subjects, love/marriage, and utopia, will be shown.
These exhibitions and their related events are free and open to the
public thanks to the generous support of the Friends of the Princeton
University Library.
January 23, 2013 – February
14, 2013 - West Windsor, New Jersey
Mercer
County will officially kick off a yearlong celebration of its 175th
Anniversary year with Mapping Mercer, an exhibition of
historic and contemporary maps that trace some of the history of this
region. The exhibit will be on display at The Gallery at Mercer
County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road. On display for the
first time since the early 1930s will be two of the county’s
Master Plan maps. Other featured maps include Victorian bird’s-eye
view maps of Hightstown, Hopewell Borough and Trenton, a 1719 map of
“Pensilvania, New-Jersey, New-York, and the Three Delaware
Counties,” and the last official map of New Jersey (1833)
before Mercer became a county in 1838.
June 15, 2012 - February 23, 2013 - Harbor Springs, Michigan
A
Delightful Destination: Little Traverse Bay at the Turn of the
Century is the featured temporary exhibit at the Harbor Springs
History Museum, 349 E. Main Street. In 1900 tourists and season
residents flocked to waterfront communities around Little Traverse
Bay including Petoskey and Harbor Springs. Luxury hotels opened
serving fresh oysters and lobsters. Railroad and steamship companies
created elaborate advertising campaigns that rival the current Pure
Michigan program and an economy and way of life still visible today
were created. Through vintage maps, photographs, books and postcards,
A Delightful Destination: Little Traverse Bay at the Turn of the
Century explores the region's transportation, cultural, and economic
growth during this colorful period between 1890 and 1920.
December 10, 2012 - February 24, 2013 – Washington
The
American Civil War is one of the defining events in American history.
To commemorate its 150th anniversary, the Norman B. Leventhal Map
Center at the Boston Public Library created the exhibition Torn in
Two: the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War. This multimedia
display takes a geographic and cartographic approach to exploring and
illuminating the causes of the conflict, the conduct of the war and
how the war was remembered in later years. A reduced traveling
version of the exhibition can be seen at Ford’s Theater, Center
for Education and Leadership, 514 10th Street NW, where it will
showcase 40 historic maps and related graphics (including, manuscript
letters, political cartoons, music and press of the period). A fully
illustrated, 152-page exhibition catalog is available for US $35.00;
for information about purchasing a copy, send inquiries to
maps@bpl.org.
August 29, 2012 – February
28, 2013 – Singapore
Raffles'
Letters, Intrigues behind the Founding of Singapore can
be seen at the National Library Gallery, Level 10, National Library
Building, 100 Victoria Street. The exhibition reveals important
insights into the founding of Singapore in 1819 through letters
written by Sir Stamford Raffles. Numerous maps of early Singapore and
the surrounding area are displayed. Another highlight is a replica of
what is believed to be the first landward map of Singapore. Dated
1820, the map contains details that are nor seen in subsequent maps
and shows the Singapore Town in its infancy.
September 11, 2012 – February 28, 2013 – Portland,
Maine
The exhibit, Iconic America: The United States Map as
a National Symbol, is at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center
for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine. The exhibit
takes a broad look at the symbolic use of the mapped shape of the USA
– “ushapia” – in a variety of forms:
political campaigns; patriotic expressions; textiles and clothing;
culinary and household goods; book covers; and magazine and newspaper
graphics. John Fondersmith is guest curator for the exhibit, which
will showcase a number of items from his collection. Fondersmith has
been collecting various graphics and items that use the map shape of
the United States for over 30 years. About 1990 he coined the word
“ushapia” to describe a wide range of objects and
graphics that, while not technically maps, use the basic map shape of
the United States to symbolize the country. He hopes that the exhibit
will spur further interest, discussion, and research on the symbolic
use of the US map shape. Such logo maps are used daily in a range of
media, and in a variety of forms, to convey ideas about the identity
and nature of the USA. The “shape of the nation” is truly
an important part of the American experience.
December 15, 2012 - March 18,
2013 - Durham, North Carolina
Instead of being just a
navigational tool, maps may also help people understand the social
context of past societies. Duke University students curated an
exhibit devoted to analyzing maps in innovative ways at Perkins Lobby
Gallery, Duke University Library. The exhibit, titled Mapping the
City: A Stranger’s Guide, was hosted by students working on
an independent study with Philip Stern, assistant professor of
history and co-director at the Borderworks Humanities Lab. When the
students learned that Perkins had reserved a space for a presentation
of their choice, they developed an exhibit that featured unseen works
from the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library
collection and shed light on the numerous ways in which maps can be
read. The exhibit includes rare works such as the Willem Blaeu Atlas
and a sound map of modern-day London. For students interested in the
University’s history, the exhibit features early 20th century
photographs of East Campus.
January 12, 2013 – March
30, 2013 – Marseille
Mémoires
des rives : cartes et portulans de Méditerranée is
on display at Bibliothèque Alcazar BMVR, Place René
Sarvil - 58, cours Belsunce. This exhibition reveals
the treasures of various schools of portolan mapping, with a focus on
the Marseille School. From the second half of the 16th century to the
17th century, Marseille became the center of portolan mapping.
Several names illustrate the Marseille School of portolans: the
Graffignia the Roussin, the Ambrosin. Many French and foreign
institutions were approached for loans, to better illustrate the
characteristics of these charts.
August 3, 2012 - March 31, 2013 – Cleveland
When
residents of Cleveland meet for the first time at a party or event,
one of the first questions is often “So do you live on the east
side or west side?” People relocating to Cleveland and
searching for an apartment or home quickly find out that the decision
can have far ranging effects about their daily routines and even the
friends they will make. Where does this geographical division arise
and how long has it defined who we are as “Clevelanders?”
Of course the dividing line is the Cuyahoga River, but why the
Cuyahoga? When did it take on the power to define people and their
lives? Drawing on a rich collection of maps at Western Reserve
Historical Society, 10825 East Boulevard, East vs. West –
Mapping Cleveland, the Western Reserve & the Midwest follows
the history of how the area in which we live came to be mapped,
divided up, separated into political areas of settlement, and maybe
shed some light on how east versus west became so important in
Cleveland. Interactive maps showing the earliest settlement of the
area are superimposed with 2012 images of Google maps. Visitors can
look at the changing downtown area by placing images of buildings on
a large plat map, viewing mid-19th century through mid-20th century
Cleveland. Also included are early survey tools called “Gunters
Chains”, the use of maps in politics, and geographic changes
through developments in transportation.
March 1, 2013 - April 14, 2013 – Annapolis
An
exhibition titled Envisioning the World: The First Printed Maps,
1472-1700 can be seen at Elizabeth Myers Mitchell Gallery, St.
Johns College, 60 College Avenue, Mellon Hall. The exhibition will
feature approximately 30 rare world maps drawn from the collection of
Henry Wendt, and will explore the major trends in intellectual
history from the early Renaissance through the scientific era of the
Enlightenment. Through the language of cartography, the maps in the
exhibition illustrate the way in which scientists, mathematicians,
explorers and cartographers came to grips with the shape, size and
nature of the Earth as a whole and its place in the universe.
Highlighted in the exhibition are the important contributions to this
evolving cosmography of: Ptolemy (c. 90-168 ); Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473-1543); Galileo Galilei (1564-1642); Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630); and Edmond Halley (1656-1742). Works featured in the
exhibition include: the first printed map (1472), a schematic concept
of the continents in the form of a "T" encircled by an "O"
of ocean; the first printed road map (1598), showing the cursus
publicus, the postal system of the Roman Empire, in eight sections
totaling 14 linear feet; highly decorative exemplars from the golden
age of Dutch mapmaking (17th century); and elaborate hand-colored
celestial views (1700), representing the constellations with figures
from Greek mythology.
March 13, 2013 – April 17,
2013 – London
Inspired
by the pioneering work of medical detective John Snow, who traced the
source of a deadly cholera outbreak in 1850s London to a water pump
in Soho, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is
opening its doors to the public with an exhibition celebrating his
work and legacy. Historical items on display from the archives of the
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Wellcome
Library, Museum of London and the London Metropolitan Archives
include rare maps and printed ephemera relating to cholera outbreaks
at the time. Cartographies
of Life & Death – John Snow and Disease Mapping
can
be seen at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Keppel
Street. Open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm. Free entry.