Exhibition of Treasured Maps Opens September 9 at The New York Public Library

Maps of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America from the 1600s to the Present Show Depth and Range of Library's Map Division

Celebrates the Renovation, Reopening, and Renaming of The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division

Treasured Maps: Celebrating The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, a remarkable exhibition of more than 80 rarely seen maps and atlases, opens at The New York Public Library September 9, 2005. The exhibition highlights the depth and breadth of the Library's Map Division holdings, prior to its reopening in December 2005, after a complete renovation. Treasured Maps is on view through May 14, 2006 in the Edna Barnes Salomon Room, at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Admission is free. To complement the exhibition, the Library will present a series of free curatorial talks beginning in September by Alice Hudson, Chief of the Map Division.

John Seller's "A Mapp of the World" offers a colorful miniature view of the modern world, in 1682. Symbols of the four continents decorate the bottom margin. This atlas was printed by Ann Godbid, one of the few women printers in 17th century London. Color engraving from Atlas Maritimus [Maritime atlas]. London: Printed by A. Godbid and J. Playford, for John Seller 1682.

From earliest times to the present, maps have been created and used to navigate the stars and the seas, denote ownership of estates or empires, fight wars, get around town, track development, promote products, and educate people about different ways of looking at the world. Treasured Maps charts the development of how the world has been seen through the centuries and is a fascinating chronicle of the ways in which cartographers have chosen to depict the universe and all that it contains. Exquisitely colored lithographs from a Victorian atlas depicting a God's-eye view, through dark and stormy clouds, of humanity's expansion over the globe, a 1705 map by Edmund Haley that was the first to use the arrow as a directional signal, an 1817 map of New York City showing the first use of house and building numbers, and a 1957 insurance map of Lower Manhattan that was used on a daily basis after September 11, 2001 to trace the archaeology of the World Trade Center site, are just a few examples of the diversity of the items displayed.

"Treasured Maps is a survey of our collections, from the mid 1660s to the present, and takes viewers from the macro universe to our doorstep here in New York," said Alice Hudson, Curator of the exhibition and Chief of the Map Division. "In a sense, the exhibition provides a symbolic segue from our earliest collections, which exist on paper, to the very latest resources and technologies in geography and customized mapmaking in our renovated division."

The items in Treasured Maps are drawn from the Map Division, which holds some 400,000 maps and 20,000 atlases dating from the 16th century to the present, as well as books and electronic resources. Following its renovation, the Map Division will have doubled its former storage capacity through the use of new compact shelving and remote storage. The Division will be able to accommodate many more readers at one time through the renovation of its space and will also offer increased access to map-related Internet resources with the addition of eight computers. The ornate ceiling, carved wood walls, marble trim, oak tables and other structural and decorative elements will also all be restored to their original appearance during the renovation.

"The items in Treasured Maps provide a unique view of how the world has been seen by mapmakers over the years," said David Ferriero, Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries. "Through antiquarian maps that provide a glimpse into the past, current maps that are the building blocks for future research, and the new mapping technologies that will be in use when the Map Division reopens in December, The New York Public Library is actively preserving history and creating the future."

Treasured Maps is organized into ten sections:

Ways of Looking at the World
Treasured Maps opens with two strikingly different views of the world, Andreas Cellarius's 1661 map depicting Ptolemy's theory of the geocentric universe, with the Earth at its center, juxtaposed with his illustration of Nicholas Copernicus's theory that the sun lay at the center of our planetary system . Also included in this section are constellation charts by 17th-century English mapmaker John Seller, one of which is dedicated to Edmund Halley, famous to us today for "his" comet, but known to 17th-century Europeans for sailing to the South Atlantic and mapping the constellations in the Southern hemisphere.

The Ancient World from Africa to Asia
From differing views of the world the exhibition moves from Africa to Asia, where a wall map showing Captain Cook's voyages through the Pacific and "New Holland," or Australia, epitomizes the advances in geographical knowledge and scientific mapping, based on exploration and careful measurements. In this section, Africa is shown in Bowen's "New one-sheet map of Africa," before it was politically divided up into colonies by European nations in the mid-to late 19th century. This map from the early 1880s offers evidence that coastal navigation was common long before the interior was explored, as early coastal names appear next to the emptiness of the central continent. Also on view are maps showing the Mogol Empire from the 1770s, as well as a map by Willem and Joan Blaeu depicting the "Kingdom of China," from 1640 in which the Great Wall of China is visible.

Tools of the Trade: Making Maps and Tools of the Trade: Teaching with Maps
These sections describe the tools and techniques of mapmaking and different methods of teaching with maps, and include A Hand Book for Plain and Ornamental Mapping, which shows the color options, typography, and symbols the student cartographer of 1884 needed to consider. Advertising cards distributed by Arbuckle's Ariosa coffee in 1885 are also featured. These cards depict maps of various countries and states including Arabia, Siberia, Palestine, the Empire of Japan, as well as New Jersey and Alabama, rendered "true to nature by the best modern artists," according to Arbuckle ad copy. Their literature proudly notes that these cards were used by teachers in classrooms to instruct students on geography.

The Continental Tour: Europe
Treasured Maps then turns its attention to Europe and maps created during the Renaissance by the Willem and Joan Blaeu family of European mapmakers. Published in Amsterdam at the height of Dutch power, their atlases trumpet European power and wealth, often illustrated with extraordinary color and gold edging. Also on view is a map of London from 1777 depicting the growth and redevelopment of the city a century after the Great Fire. A detailed birds-eye view map of Paris from 1740 provides important visual records of the city's layout before Baron George Eugene Haussmann's 19th-century redesign of Paris.

The Continental Tour: North America
This section includes Pieter Goos's dramatic 1668 depiction of California as an island, as well as a Civil War sketch of troop positions at Fredericksburg. An 1876 lithograph of Pittsfield, Massachusetts by Frederick W. Beers in the County Atlas of Berkshire, Massachusetts locates the Herman Melville estate, an illustration of the use of such atlases in literary and genealogical research.

New York City: The Long Island Connection; Manhattan: Time and Again; Continental New York City: The Bronx; and Over and Under the City

Will Taylor, City of New York. Created with the use of hot air balloons and church steeples, this view of the city in its entirety extends from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil. Here we see Central Park in its youth, and the relatively undeveloped West Side of Manhattan. Lithograph, glazed; New York: Galt & Hoy, 1879. © The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library.

New York City and its surroundings feature prominently in the final sections of Treasured Maps , from an atlas showing the Steinway piano factory from 1873 in East Astoria to early surveyor's maps of farmland along the Brooklyn shoreline, to the Knickerbocker Beer view of greater New York with a star prominently marking the location of what was in 1912 the largest brewery in the City. The classic five-foot long "Water Map" from the 1874 Topographical Atlas of the city of New York is on view, and is still in use today by the construction trade to locate underground streams, wetlands, canals, and creeks. Will Taylor's 1879 City of New York map was created with the use of hot air balloons and church steeples and shows detailed views of the city from the Battery to Spuyten Duyvil, including the largely undeveloped West Side and the precursor to Grand Central, with tracks soon to disappear under Park Avenue. Two subway maps are on view, the first a 1976 geometric Vignelli & Associates design and the second from a 1979 geographically accurate redesign. The exhibition concludes with two maps of the pre-World Trade Center site from 1957, items which were consulted almost on a daily basis following September 11, 2001, to trace the archaeology of the area in making plans for redeveloping downtown Manhattan.

Curatorial Talks
To accompany the exhibition, the Library's Celeste Bartos Education Center will present a series of curatorial talks, allowing Library visitors to gain rare "behind the scenes" insights from the curators responsible for putting together NYPL exhibitions. On September 16, October 13, and January 13, at 12:30 p.m.; and November 9 at 6:00 p.m., Alice Hudson, Chief of The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, will present illustrated lectures based on Treasured Maps that will feature favorite maps and views of New York City, from Central Park to Coney Island. Other remarkable maps from the exhibition will be discussed, to show how antiquarian maps such as those of the Danube River and the Great Wall of China increase our understanding of historic events. The lectures will also offer a revealing glimpse into the maps in the Map Division.

About The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division
The New York Public Library's map collection dates from the Library's inception, with holdings from the founding Lenox and Astor libraries. It was established in 1898 as a separate library collection, and named a division in 1947. Today, home to some 400,000 maps and 20,000 atlases from the 16th century to the present, the division is internationally ranked among the top ten map collections for size and depth of holdings, as well as the breadth of its services. Among its particular strengths are its New York City map collection, which includes property, topographical, and geological maps, along with nautical charts and renderings of New York's shorelines, landfills, and wetlands - many of which are on display in the exhibition. These resources are available for free public use and are used heavily by scholars, historians, novelists, journalists, genealogists, attorneys, tourists, and others. On its reopening, the division will be named in honor of the renovation project's lead donor, Lionel Pincus, and Library Trustee Princess Firyal of Jordan. The Map Division is one of the last remaining spaces in the Humanities and Social Sciences Library to be renovated, and is critical to the library's research collections. Designed by Davis Brody Bond, LLP, the project is part of the renovation of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library begun in the early 1980s.

Treasured Maps: Celebrating The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division will be on view from September 9, 2005 through May 14, 2006 in the Edna Barnes Salomon Room, The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library on the third floor. Exhibition hours are Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Saturday, December 24; Sunday, December 11; Mondays; and holidays. Admission is free. For more information, call 212.869-8089 or visit www.nypl.org.

Support for The New York Public Library's Exhibitions Program has been provided by Pinewood Foundation and by Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III. Additional support for Treasured Maps has been provided by J. Thomas and Lavinia W. Touchton.

The renovation of The New York Public Library's Map Division is made possible through the generous support of Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal.

###

About The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. It comprises four research centers - the Humanities and Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Science, Industry and Business Library - and 85 Branch Libraries in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items, including materials for the visually impaired. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The Library serves some 13 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 13 million users internationally, who access collections and services through the NYPL website, www.nypl.org.

Also on Exhibit:
The four research libraries of The New York Public Library (The Humanities and Social Sciences Library, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Science, Industry & Business Library) offer a broad range of exhibitions including the following:

"I Am With You": Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855-2005), on view beginning September 9 at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at The New York Public Library, on view beginning October 21 at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

A Community of Artists: 50 Years of the Public Theater, on view through October 15 in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Plaza.

The Juilliard School, 1905-2005: Celebrating 100 Years on view September 16, 2005 through January 14, 2006 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza

Opt In to Advertising's New Age, on view beginning September 27, 2005 in Healy Hall at SIBL, 188 Madison Avenue.

Malcolm X: A Search for Truth, on view through December 31, 2005 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, 515 Malcolm X Boulevard.

Contact: Jennifer Bertrand, 212.704.8645

jb:09.07.05:nypl008