While Prague’s famed clock is gone for repairs, we take a look at its history.
Category: History
How Trompe-L’Oeil Added Information and Ornamentation to Maps
Look But Don’t Touch: Tactile Illusions on Maps at the Harvard Map Collection explores how cartographers have used trompe l’oeil illustrations on maps.
Vintage Postcards Will Send You on a Whimsical Roadtrip Across the US
Chicago’s Newberry Library has acquired and digitized the nation’s largest trove of postcards and related materials.
Four Centuries of Mapping the Subterranean World
Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center is exhibiting maps of volcanoes, catacombs, mines, subways, sewage systems, and other underground cartography.
When Thirsty 19th-Century New Yorkers Built a Seemingly Impossible Aqueduct
The Museum of the City of New York is exhibiting the art and engineering of the Croton Aqueduct on the 175th anniversary of the watershed.
Revisiting MoMA’s Controversial 1940 Italian Renaissance Blockbuster
In 1940, a landmark Italian Renaissance exhibition made a stop at the Museum of Modern Art, leading visitors to question its commitment to the contemporary.
Thousands of Objects Tell of Sex, Drugs, and Transcendence Across the Centuries
Altered States: Sex, Drugs, and Transcendence in the Ludlow-Santo Domingo Library at Harvard’s Houghton Library explores the human desire to escape the ordinary.
Crowdfunding a Memorial to Félicette, the First Cat Astronaut
A Kickstarter project is crowdfunding for a public statue memorializing Félicette, the first cat rocketed into space in 1963.
The Dance of Death Across Six Centuries of Art
The Blanton Museum of Art in Texas is exhibiting works on paper from the 15th to 20th centuries, all representing the danse macabre, or dance of death.
North America’s Largest Witchcraft Collection Has Its First Major Exhibition
The first major exhibit on the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection opens Halloween, and explores the persecution of women through its historic objects.
Vintage Halloween Cards Are the Stuff of Nightmares
Anthropomorphic pumpkins, mirror divination, and space-traveling witches all appear in the curious collision of imagery on vintage Halloween cards.
A 1903 Proposal to Preserve the Dead in Glass Cubes
In 1903, an inventor patented a method of preserving corpses in glass, one of a number of radical inventions that has sought to resist death’s decay.