Category — Map Societies

The Texas Map Society’s Annual Spring Meeting will be held Friday thru Sunday, April 3-5, 2009 in San Antonio Texas.

This year’s focus is on Spanish Colonial Mapping and their Map Makers:

The three days will include presentations by a group of exceptional scholars focusing on “Spanish Colonial Mapping and Map Makers,” and an outstanding lineup of tours, dinners and events in and around one of Texas’ most famous tourist destinations.

Presenters include Richard Kagan, of John Hopkins University, our Keynote Speaker, as well as John Hébert of the Library of Congress, David Buisseret, formerly at the University of Texas at Arlington, Ricardo Padrón, at the University of Virginia, John Miller Morris of the University of Texas at San Antonio, John Wheat of the Center for American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and Bruce Winders, Curator and Historian of the Alamo.

Tours include the Project Urban Segment of the San Antonio River (60 million dollar improvement project), P2 Energy Solutions for digital mapping, and the Nelson Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art.

Via: MapHist

The Rocky Mountain Map Society is presenting the Eighth Annual Rocky Mountain Antique Map Fair at the Denver Central Library, 10 W. 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, CO. Fifteen European and American dealers will show thousands of maps from the 16th through 20th centuries. Prices range from $10 to more than $30,000. Experts will be on hand to examine maps brought to the fair. Hours are 5 to 8 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Entrance: $5.

At 1pm on Saturday afternoon, Rocky Mountain Map Society member Tom Overton will present, The Changing Face of Colorado: County Boundaries from Statehood to the 20th Century in the Gates Room on the 5th floor of the Denver Central Library.

For more information, visit the Rocky Mountain Map Society’s web site.

Sorry for passing this along so late in the game, but I have been playing “catch-up” with antique map news.

Please join us this Saturday, March 10th at 2:30 pm for our next meeting at the New York Public Library.

“United States of America v. Edward Forbes Smiley III.”

Our featured speaker is New York Map Society member and staff write for the Hartford Courant, Ms. Kim Martineau.

Ms. Martineau began her reports on the Smiley case immediately after his x-acto knife was discovered on the floor at the Yale University Library. Since then, she ha covered the continuing investigation, and was present when Smiley was sentenced. At this month’s meeting, she’ll offer members and guests an overview of the complete case.

NOTE: This month’s meeting will be in the lower-level Auditorium in the Library’s South Court Celeste Bartos Education Center. Stairway and elevator are just inside the door to the Education Center.

A brief rundown of upcoming events related to antique map collecting from various parts of the globe that have come to my attention:

Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Historical lecture. The Susquehanna Museum of Havre de Grace will present the Ellsworth B. Shank Historical Lecture at 7 p.m. at City Hall, 711 Pennington Ave., Havre de Grace. The topic will be “Early Cartography and Navigation on the Chesapeake” and will be presented by John Macek of NOAA. Call 410-939-5780 for more information.

Via: The Baltimore Sun

Through March 27, 2007
GALLERY C, 3532 Wade Ave., Raleigh, North Carolina: “Rare Antique Maps and Prints,” European and American cartography of the Southeastern United States. Phone: 888-278-3973 for more information. 

Via: Relish Now!

Friday, March 30 – Saturday March 31st, 2007
Exploring and Being Explored: Africa in the Nineteenth Century is a two-day international conference at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. Jointly organized by the National Maritime Museum and The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, the focus is on medicine, mapping and exploration in Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, highlighting the common ground between fields that were once thought to be independent of one another.

Via: MapHist

March 10, 2007 – 1p.m.
The Library of Virginia will host the 2007 Alan M. and Nathalie P. Voorhees Lecture on the History of Cartography. The lecture will take place in the Library of Virginia Lecture Hall.

Dr. John Hébert, chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, and Dr. Helen C. Rountree, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Old Dominion University and the author and editor of numerous works on the Native Americans of the East Coast, will deliver the fourth annual Voorhees Lecture on the History of Cartography. Dr. Hébert will look at John Smith’s map of Virginia as an active promotional device for acquiring territory. Dr. Rountree will discuss John Smith as a mapmaker who mapped what he saw, though selectively.

Prior to the lecture, attendees will have a unique opportunity to learn more about the Library’s map collection from staff members and view many of the Library’s rare maps. This will be followed by a boxed lunch. The lecture is free of charge; however, there is a small fee for the tour and boxed lunch, and advance reservations are required.

This lecture will also introduce the new Fry-Jefferson Map Society, an affinity group affiliated with the Semper Virginia Society. Members of the Fry-Jefferson Map Society will help develop, enhance and promote the cartographic collections of the Library of Virginia.

The lecture is free of charge, but reservations are required. The special tours and boxed lunch require advance registration by calling the Library of Virginia Foundation office at 804-692-3900. The Foundation office may also be contacted for information regarding the Fry-Jefferson Map Society.

Monday, March 05, 2007—Saturday, March 17, 2007
Those attending the Voorhees Lecture are also invited to enjoy special programming that includes a temporary exhibition of 23 maps and atlases, “Virginia Described: John Smith’s Map and Its Derivatives”, on view in the lobby at the Library of Virginia from March 5th through March 17th.

Via: MapHist

Maps and Society – The Warburg Institute – Sixteenth Series. Lectures in the history of cartography convened by Catherine Delano Smith (Institute of Historical Research) and Tony Campbell (formerly Map Library, British Library). Meetings are held on selected Thursdays at The Warburg Institute, University of London,Woburn Square, London WC1H OAB at 5.00 pm. Admission is free. Meetings are followed by refreshments. All are most welcome.

Enquiries: +44 (0) 20 8346 5112 (Catherine Delano Smith).

March 29, 2007 –  Dr Michael Winstanley and William Shannon (Department of History, University of Lancaster) “Lord Burghley and Elizabethan Maps of Lancashire”.

April 26, 2007 -  Hugh Prince (formerly, Department of Geography, University College London) “Surveyor or Plagiarist? The Parks on John Warburton’s Map of Hertfordshire (c. 1724)”.

May 17, 2007 - Jill Shefrin (Trinity College, University of Toronto) “Nursery Instruction: Cartographical Novelties for Georgian and Victorian Children”.

Via: MapHist

The 11th Symposium of the International Coronelli Society for the Study of Globes will take place in Venice, Italy (Vincenzo Coronelli’s native town,) September 28th to September 30th, 2007. Themes of the Symposium include:

..all aspects of the study of globes, especially the history of globes, globes in their historical and socio-cultural context, globe makers, especially Coronelli, globe related instruments such as armillary spheres, planetaria and telluria.

Visit the Society’s registration page to find out more.

Via: MapHist.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram at dfw.com has an announcement regarding the Fifth Biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography: “Mapping the Sacred” this coming Friday, October 6th, 2006 to be held at the University of Texas at Arlington Central Library.

The day will feature presentations by cartographic scholars from the United States, England, Israel and Lebanon, in addition to the opening of the Special Collections exhibit “Mapping the Sacred: Belief and Religion in the History of Cartography,” and will be followed on Saturday by the fall meeting of the Texas Map Society.

The lectures will focus on how religions of the world used maps to depict sacred ideas and, at times, to keep track of worldly territories. Many of the world’s major religions will be represented in the lectures, including Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Mormonism, and Native American.

The article notes that the cartouche pictured above from from Dutch engraver and map seller Frederick de Wit’s map of America, Novißima et Accuratißima Septentrionalis ac Meridionalis Americae, published in Amsterdam in 1680, illustrates a finely rendered baroque cartouche that uses a winged angel and an allegorical figure of a beautiful woman clothed in swirling drapery, carrying a small cross to represent christianity, while less appealing allegorical figures represent America (at left, with a feather headdress) and heresy or false religion (the figure at right, with demonlike claws on feet and hands.)

The public is welcome at all events.