News & Events

Please join John Delaney, Curator of Maps, for a tour of the cur­rent exhibit in the main exhi­bi­tion gallery at Fire­stone Library, “First X, Then Y, Now Z: Land­mark The­matic Maps”.   The tour will meet in the main exhi­bi­tion gallery at Firestone.

“First X, Then Y, Now Z: Land­mark The­matic Maps” intro­duces view­ers to the early his­tory of the­matic mapping–the top­i­cal lay­er­ing (Z) of geo­graphic space (X-Y). Exhib­ited are early, if not the ear­li­est, the­matic maps in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines, such as mete­o­rol­ogy, geol­ogy, hydrog­ra­phy, nat­ural his­tory, med­i­cine, and sociology/economics. Sev­eral ground­break­ing exem­plars from the fields of ethnog­ra­phy, lin­guis­tics, and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and trans­porta­tion are included. A few, more con­cep­tual, maps about lit­er­ary sub­jects, love/marriage, and utopia extend this the­matic car­to­graphic explo­ration.

Finally, to answer this basic question–Who is the typ­i­cal exhi­bi­tion viewer?–an on-going the­matic map is being cre­ated from viewer responses regard­ing gen­der, Prince­ton or other affil­i­a­tion (stu­dent, alum­nus, faculty/staff, local res­i­dent, other vis­i­tor), and the state or for­eign coun­try where the per­son was born and/or grew up. Every­one has a chance to put them­selves lit­er­ally on the map.