Books
A Collection of Creative Cartographers' Madcap Maps
Originally intended purely as tools for navigation, maps have long branched off from this practical function to become an unexpected medium for visual expression.
cartography
Art
Painted Maps Jam-Packed with Data
Paula Scher, the first female principal of Pentagram and designer of identities for the Public Theater and Tiffany's — not to mention hundreds of hit album covers — grew up surrounded by maps.
News
A Map Library Is Digitizing Its Rarest Globes as 3D Models
"Globes have a very low survival rate," explained Ian Fowler, director of the Osher Map Library (OML) at the University of Southern Maine.
Books
Before Google Earth: A Rare Cartographic Compendium From Renaissance Europe
Long before the ubiquity of Google Maps, these colorful engravings, produced between 1572 and 1617, comprised the world's most accurate and elaborate collection of urban cartography ever made.
Art
Why Cannibals Were on Every 16th-Century Map of the New World
Many of the first European maps of the Americas included warnings of cannibalism, despite no proof of such activity.
Art
Mapping the Gender Imbalance in City Street Names
This August, activist group Osez le Féminisme (Dare to be Feminist) installed guerrilla signs in Paris to rename streets and parks after women like singer Nina Simone, sailor Florence Arthaud, and author Simone de Beauvoir.
In Brief
Researchers Decipher the Map That May Have Guided Columbus Westward
You might call Henricus Martellus's 1491 world map — which many believe Christopher Columbus consulted before setting out on his voyage — a symbol of the limits of human knowledge.
Art
New York's Oldest Museums: Where Are They Now?
Old NYC, a project by software engineer Dan Vanderkam, launched last month with thousands of images from the New York Public Library mapped across the five boroughs.
Art
Navigating Brooklyn from the 17th to the 21st Centuries
Brooklyn has long touted its status as the unofficial fourth largest city in the United States, if not for the so-called "great mistake of 1898" — the consolidation of New York City.
Art
What the World Never Looked Like
During the late Renaissance, many gold-thirsty European explorers set sail on a quest to locate the fastest route to the Orient.
Art
An Atlas Gathers the Most Creative Contemporary Maps
Considering how long the earth's been around, you'd think it would have already been exhaustively charted. But in recent years, mapmaking has exploded.
Art
A 19th-Century Map of the Geology Hidden Beneath NYC Streets
There was much rejoicing among cartography lovers when the New York Public Library's Lionel Pincus & Princess Firyal Map Division recently released over 20,000 maps for free use.