The 27th International Conference on the History of Cartography will take place in Belo Horizonte, Brazil on 9-14 July 2017. Conference paper abstracts can be submitted until 15 October 2016. [Imago Mundi/WMS]
Category: Antique Maps
And Now Some Map News from Denver
The Denver Post has a piece that is simultaneously a profile of Christopher Lane, proprietor of the Denver-based Philadelphia Print Shop West (which sells its share of antique maps) and a look at the Rocky Mountain Map Society’s upcoming Map Month. Its theme, “Illusions, Delusions & Confusions,” will be explored by a series of lectures at the Denver Public Library running from 2 May to 9 June and two concurrent exhibitions on myths in maps at Denver’s Central Library and at the Map Library of the University of Colorado Boulder: brochure, program (PDF). [via]
Cielo e Terra
Another Italian map exhibit to tell you about: 1716-2016 Cielo e Terra, featuring the cartographic holdings of Rome’s Biblioteca Casanatense, including the 1716 celestial and terrestrial globes of Amanzio Moroncelli, opens tomorrow and runs until 28 November. [WMS]
Previously: When Italy Drew the World.
The Pre-Siege Maps of Malta
Produced by the Malta Map Society and Maltese publisher BDL, Albert Ganado and Joseph Schirò’s Pre-Siege Maps of Malta “embraces all the pre-siege separate maps of Malta, whether manuscript or printed, as well as the appearance of Malta on the maps of the Mediterranean drawn by Ptolemy in the second century AD, by Al-Idrisi in 1157, and by practically all the cartographers that came after them up to 1564.” More from the Times of Malta. Not available at Amazon, but can be purchased directly from the publisher. [WMS/WMS]
The WSJ Reviews China at the Center
Here’s a review in the Wall Street Journal of the Asian Art Museum’s exhibition, China at the Center, which I’ve told you about before.
The show includes portraits of both as well as a half-dozen books to evoke the libraries each brought and the impact they had. Most helpful, however, are two large touchscreens, one for each map, that allow us to access translations and summaries of many of the texts. This quickly becomes addictive, because the journey is full of surprises. Here, we read about scientific theories or descriptions based on travelers’ accounts. There, we learn how best to capture a unicorn.
[WMS]
Previously: China at the Center; Upcoming Symposium: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange.
A Look at the Osher Map Library
Edgar Allen Beem’s essay in the May/June issue of Humanities serves as a good introduction to the Osher Map Library, a major map collection housed at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. The Osher Map Library turns up a lot in my online cartographic perambulations; it’s good to know the history and origins of the place and the people working there (e.g. faculty scholar Matthew Edney, who also directs the History of Cartography project, and director Ian Fowler, who joined in 2014).
Stanford’s David Rumsey Map Center Opens Today
As I mentioned earlier this month, the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University opens today (KQED coverage). To celebrate, there’s a grand opening and open house tonight from 6 to 7 PM at the Center, which is located on the fourth floor of Green Library. Presentations and workshops take place on the 20th and 21st, for which registration is required. That’s followed by a day-long open house on the 22nd.
The Center’s first exhibition, A Universe of Maps: Opening the David Rumsey Map Center, runs from today until 28 August (here’s the online version).
Previously: David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford Opens April 19.
Update: National Geographic coverage. [WMS]
When Italy Drew the World
An exhibition of 16th-century Italian maps, Quando l’Italia disegnava il mondo: Tesori Cartografici del Rinascimento Italiano (“When Italy Drew the world: Cartographic Treasures of the Italian Renaissance”) opened last Friday at the Palazzo del Podestà in Bergamo, Italy. It runs until 10 July. English summary. [Tony Campbell]
Cartographic Japan
Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps came out last month from the University of Chicago Press. It’s a collection of 58 academic essays edited by Kären Wigen, Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas (see the table of contents) that provide, in the words of the publisher, “close analysis of one hundred maps from the late 1500s to the present day, each one treated as a distinctive window onto Japan’s tumultuous history.” Amazon, iBooks. [WMS]
The Golden Age of American Pictorial Maps
The Golden Age of American Pictorial Maps is an exhibition running until 3 September 2016 at the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library. (If you can’t go there physically, there’s plenty online at the link, too.) “Curated by Dr. Stephen J. Hornsby, co-editor of the Historical Atlas of Maine [previously] and author of a forthcoming book on American pictorial maps, this exhibit looks at the golden age of pictorial or illustrated maps from the 1920s to the 1960s. Reflecting the exuberance of American popular culture and the creativity of commercial art, the maps are stimulating to the imagination and dazzling to the eye.” [WMS]
Related reading: The Art of Illustrated Maps by John Roman (previously).
Vancouver Archives Digitizing Old Maps
The City of Vancouver Archives: “Thanks to funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program, we’ve recently completed a project to digitize over 2100 maps and plans and made them available online for you to use and re-use. We’ve tried to digitize these maps with enough resolution to support future types of re-use and processing, including optical character recognition and feature extraction.” A selection is available on Flickr. [WMS]
De Wit’s Planisphærium Cœleste
As part of its regular “Map Monday” feature, Atlas Obscura looks closely at Frederick de Wit’s Planisphærium cœleste (1670), above. Like other celestial maps of the period, it’s as though the monsters on sea charts have been placed in the skies—especially true for constellations like Cetus, as the article shows.
This reminds me that there’s quite a lot about antique celestial maps in The Map Room’s archives: The Face of the Moon; Star Atlases; Historical Celestial Atlases on the Web; The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Celestial Atlases; Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps; Another Look at the Linda Hall Library’s Celestial Atlases; Christian Constellations.
A book about celestial maps, Nick Kanas’s Star Maps: History, Artistry and Cartography, is now in its second edition (Springer, 2012). I own a copy of the first edition.
Previously about Frederick de Wit: A New Book About Frederick de Wit.
Old Logging Maps
North Country Public Radio’s Adirondack Attic: “Jerry Pepper, librarian at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, shows Andy Flynn a collection of maps that detail logging operations by the Finch Pruyn paper company in the town of Newcomb. The maps were used from the 1920s to about 1950, the year of the last river drive carrying logs from the Adirondack Mountains down the Hudson River.” [Tony Campbell]
My county’s archives has a collection of old logging maps; I blogged about them in 2007.
PRI’s The World on #MapMonsterMonday
Another look at #MapMonsterMonday: This afternoon, Dory Klein of the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center spoke with Public Radio International’s The World about sea monsters on old maps.
Previously: The Boston Globe on #MapMonsterMonday; Bailey Henderson’s Sea Monster Sculptures.
Upcoming Symposium: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange
Further to my post about China at the Center, the exhibition of rare maps now taking place at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco: Mark Stephen Mir, who wrote the exhibition catalogue’s chapter on the Verbiest map, writes to share the following about a symposium coming up later this month: Reimagining the Globe and Cultural Exchange: From the World Maps of Ricci and Verbiest to Google Earth.
The Ricci Institute is hosting a series of events connected with our exhibition China at the Center at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. One of these events is an international symposium held at the University of San Francisco April 22-24 with extra events at the AAM and in the Manresa Gallery on the USF campus. The topic of the symposium concerns the history of East-West scientific exchange through the medium of cartography beginning with ancient maps and continuing to the present with the latest technological innovations. Internationally known specialists in cartography and East-West cultural exchange will be invited to share their research, while experts from Google and NASA will discuss the latest technological developments in enriching our knowledge of the world and the cosmos.
Registration on-site is $85, or free for students and USF faculty and staff. The program has been posted online (PDF).
Previously: China at the Center.