New Exhibition, Cartographic Perspectives: From the
New World to Your World, Showcases Lehigh Maps.
“Journey all over the universe in a map, without the
expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the
inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst.”
-- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
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Click for larger map |
In 1520, when the New World was still new to the European
world, the Viennese cartographer Peter Apian produced a map
of the world that was one of the first to identify “America”
by that name. From 1919 to today, the Pennsylvania
Geological Survey has been studying the state’s geology. In
the late 1800s, the federal government published John Wesley
Powell’s reports on the American West. Hernán Cortés
conquering the Aztec city Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City),
early Dutch settlers surveying their North American
colonies, urban sociologists tracking the settlement of
African Americans in Chicago: all of these ways of seeing
and shaping place however violent or imaginative or
productive or scientific, and however different in
historical era or geographical location, have been
accomplished in part through maps. This variety of
cartographic purposes and forms makes clear the power of
maps to represent and to shape new knowledge about place.
This variety is evident in Lehigh’s collections, which
contains all of the maps mentioned above. It also includes
maps of exploration throughout the ages, maps of surveying
and mining, maps of imaginary places, maps of zoning and
urban planning, portolan charts, and maps of voyages around
the world. This richness inspired the exhibit that opens on
February 22, 2008: “Cartographic Perspectives: From the New
World to Your World.” Alongside the range of maps, the
exhibit also features a range of perspectives on how Lehigh
faculty and students use, read, and make maps. Faculty and
graduate students frame some of the treasures of the Lehigh
map collections by explaining how they read and use maps.
Students from Lehigh’s Global Citizenship program show and
narrate their experiences mapping the world in their studies
abroad. Finally, visitors will have a chance to see a short
cartographic history of Bethlehem and Lehigh in maps
alongside early sixteenth and seventeenth century world
maps.
On February 26th, a gallery talk will mark the opening of
the exhibit. Professor Frank Pazzaglia (Earth and
Environmental Sciences), Professor Stephen Cutcliffe
(History), and CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow Lauren Coats will
talk about their own cartographic perspectives. Coats, guest
curator, will introduce the exhibit. Pazzaglia will discuss
the Pennsylvania geologic survey, and Cutcliffe will discuss
the mapping of the West by John Wesley Powell.
“Cartographic Perspectives” will be on display from
February 22 – June 31, 2008 throughout Linderman Library. A
reception and talk, free and open to the public, will be
held in the Bayer Galleria in Linderman Library at 4pm,
February 26, 2008.
-- Lauren Coats
Article posted February
2008
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