2018 UK Mapping Festival

The UK Mapping Festival takes place from 2 to 7 September in London: see their sponsored post on Londonist. The festival is a mix of exhibitions, talks, workshops and other events. Exhibition passes are free, but certain events are not. The conference part of the festival takes place over three days and costs up to £95 per day to attend, but as the program is a mix of geospatial, historical, cartographic and general-interest material, you might not need to go every day.

ISHMap Symposium in Portland, Maine

Registration is now open for the 2018 Symposium of the International Society for the History of the Map. It takes place from 21 to 23 June 2018 at the Osher Map Library in Portland, Maine, and it’s free to attend. (Like many academic events, registration is so that they have a number to plan for.) Here’s the preliminary program.

ISHMap is still in the middle of its constitutional crisis, which is affecting the organization of this conference; here are the unpleasant details from the perspective of the Edney faction, which is running the conference.

Previously: What the Hell Is Going On with the International Society for the History of the Map?

Canada Before Confederation

Written by Chet Van Duzer and Lauren Beck, Canada Before Confederation: Maps at the Exhibition (Vernon Press, July 2017) explores 18 maps from the 16th through the 18th century. The book accompanies an exhibition of (presumably the same) maps and a conference, Canada Before Confederation: Early Exploration and Mapping, which takes place next month, 13-14 November, at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia (preliminary conference program). The back cover copy mentions that the map exhibition has travelled or is travelling to several other locations, but I haven’t been able to find any online; if anyone knows where else it’s been, let me know and I’ll update this post. [WMS]

Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography

The Barry Lawrence Ruderman Conference on Cartography takes place from 19 to 21 October 2017 at the David Rumsey Map Center at Stanford University. Speakers include a number of graduate students—the conference’s focus is on emerging scholars—as well as Connectography author Parag Khanna, who’s giving the keynote, and Chet Van Duzer, who’s giving a talk on the fear of blank spaces on early modern maps—something I’m very much interested in. [WMS]

CCA Annual Conference in Ottawa

The Canadian Cartographic Association’s annual conference gets under way tomorrow at Carleton University in Ottawa. Here’s the conference program. It’s just an hour’s drive from where I live, and by all rights I should be attending, but I’ve been moving house all month and there’s no way I can spare the time. Best wishes to the conference organizers and attendees.

Later This Month, in Chicago

The International Map Collectors’ Society is holding its 34th International Symposium at the Newberry in Chicago later this month, from Monday the 24th of October to Saturday the 29th. Its theme is “Private Map Collecting and Public Map Collections in the United States”; the preliminary program is available online. Registration is currently $270.

The Symposium coincides with the fourth annual Chicago International Map Fair, which runs from the 28th to the 30th at the Chicago Cultural Center. Free admission with a suggested donation of $5-10. [WMS]

Library of Congress Conference Celebrates 500th Anniversary of Waldseemüller’s Carta Marina

Manuscript Page from the 1516 Carta Marina. Jay I. Kislak Collection, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.
Manuscript Page from the 1516 Carta Marina. Jay I. Kislak Collection, Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

Later this week, the Library of Congress will host a two-day conference celebrating the 500th anniversary of Martin Waldseemüller’s 1516 map, Carta Marina. Facts or Fictions: Debating the Mysteries of Early Modern Science and Cartography will take place on 6-7 October in the Coolidge Auditorium in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C. The conference agenda is not limited to Waldseemüller or his 1516 map; notable speakers include Kirsten Seaver, Chet Van Duzer and, with a major lecture, Dava Sobel. Free admission; no tickets or reservations required.

(The 1516 Carta Marina should not be confused with the Waldseemüller map most people mean: it’s his 1507 Universalis Cosmographia that names “America.” Nor should it be confused with Olaus Magnus’ Carta Marina.)

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.

International Workshop on Portolan Charts

maggiolo-portolan
Vesconte Maggiolo, Portolan chart, 1541. Kartenabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. Reproduced from Wikimedia Commons.

The program for the First International Workshop on the Origin and Evolution of Portolan Charts, which takes place 5-6 June 2016 in Lisbon, Portugal, is now live. The conference focuses on the history of portolan charts and the analytical techniques used to study them. [via]

Conference on GIS and Ancient History

Mapping the Past: GIS Approaches to Ancient History, a conference hosted by the Ancient World Mapping Center (the folks behind the Barrington Atlas), takes place at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, from 7 to 9 April 2016. It’s open to the public. Here’s the full schedule. [via]

Previously: Antiquity à la Carte.