New Map Exhibition in Leiden

“When looking at maps, we should always be mindful of the question: Who is mapping what and for what purpose?” A new exhibition at the Museum Volkskunde in Leiden, in collaboration with Leiden University Libraries, Kaarten: navigeren en manipuleren [Maps: Navigating and Manipulating], which opened last month, gathers together contemporary art and antique maps from their respective collections to explore the question of truth and perspective in maps. One example: a “serio-comic map” from the Crimean war (in Dutch). Another video, also in Dutch. Runs until 29 October 2023. Tickets 15€ or less.

Het Grote Kaartenboek (The Great Book of Maps)

Out today from WBooks: Het Grote Kaartenboek: Vijf eeuwen cartografie [The Great Book of Maps: Five Centuries of Cartography] a book collecting 500 years of maps from the National Archives of the Netherlands. Edited by Ron Guleij, it also features eight essays by guest authors. (In Dutch, naturally.) We’ve seen other map books that focus on the holdings of a specific library or archive: I’m thinking specifically of Debbie Hall’s Treasures from the Map Room (2016), which presented maps from the Bodleian Library, and Tom Harper’s Atlas: A World of Maps from the British Library (2018). This one seems to be taking a look behind the curtain, with material on collection management (assuming Google Translate is not deceiving me).

Previously: The History of the Netherlands in 100 Old Maps.

Simple COVID Maps Show the Growth in the Positivity Rate

Innouveau’s Corona Status Maps are simple yet effective: they show the rate of positive tests at the national, regional, county or city level, depending on the map. They’re animated and have responsive sliders to quickly show how the positivity rate has changed over time; clicking on a region gives a bit more detail as well. With maps of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam, the Netherlands plus Germany, Central Europe and Europe, there’s a distinct emphasis in the maps’ focus. [Maps Mania]

The Ceramic Map of Delft

Mappery has photos of the new Keramieken Kaart van Delft (Ceramic Map of Delft), a remarkable large ceramic mosaic map based on a 1672 map by Frederick de Wit that is mounted to a brick wall on a street in Delft, the Netherlands. Designed by artist Nan Deardorff-McClain, the map was supported by a crowdfunding campaign and built by around 500 local volunteers. The grand opening was to have been in March, but the pandemic intervened. More photos are available at the project’s Facebook and Instagram pages; a short video on the making of the map is below (and on YouTube). Coverage in the Algemeen Dagblad is in Dutch, as are most of the links.

The History of the Netherlands in 100 Old Maps

Briefly noted: the publication last month of Marieke van Delft and Reinder Storm’s De Geschiedeneis van Nederland in 100 Oude Kaarten (Lannoo), whose title, for the 98.6 percent of you who are not visiting this website from the Netherlands, translates as The History of the Netherlands in 100 Old Maps, which makes it the same sort of book as Susan Schulten’s History of America in 100 Maps (reviewed here), only about the Netherlands. And in Dutch. It’s not listed at every Amazon store (and at the moment is not in stock where it is listed), but it’s available (at a discount) from the publisher.

Marleen Smit contributed to the book; here’s her post about it (in English). There’s a brief promotional video (in Dutch).

Amsterdam’s Interactive Maps

Many cities’ websites have a map section that contains a few interesting maps, but the City of Amsterdam’s interactive maps are something else in their number (more than 80 right now) and breadth and detail. They use discrete map pages powered by Google Maps (though not necessarily Google Maps tiles), rather than layers in a web-based GIS viewer, and that makes them pretty damn responsive in comparison, too. Or if you must have layers, there’s the Map of Maps. [CityLab]

Map Exhibitions Around the World

Mapping the Philippine Seas, an exhibition of 165 maps and sea charts of the Philippine archipelago from the 16th to the 19th century from the private collections of the Philippine Map Collectors Society. At the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. Opened 15 March, runs until 29 April. BusinessWorld. [WMS]

The Osher Map Library’s next exhibition, To Conquer or Submit? America Views the Great War, opens this Thursday (Facebook, Eventbrite). It “commemorates and explores American participation in the Great War—the ‘War to End All Wars’—with a sample of informative and propagandistic posters, maps, and atlases” from the Osher collections, which are based at the University of Southern Maine in Portland.

The World According to Blaeu: Joan Blaeu’s 1648 map of the world, more than two by three metres in size, will be on display at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam from 14 April to 31 December. [WMS]

Historical Maps and Geographical Errors

flevoland

Victor van Werkhooven’s cartographical pet peeve: historical maps of Europe that include Flevoland, which didn’t even exist until the 20th century. (Polders. Dikes. Land reclamation. You get the idea.) It’s not often that the physical shape of the world—the coasts, the shorelines—has to be taken into account when creating a historical map, but this is one such case. [Mapfail]