Antwerp

Oh my God! My last post to this blog dates back more than 4 months! It’s not that I didn’t have anything to tell, but rather that I was too busy. Actually, I have been working on an ‘ambitious project in the field of cartography’ the last few months, but unfortunately I can’t go into more detail at the moment.

Anyway, there is at least a new publication I can announce. Lannoo publishers and the FelixArchief (City Archives Antwerp) will present the 365 dagen Antwerpen (365 days Antwerp) next Wednesday, 8 October 2008. Every single day of the year is covered by an event from the history of the city and illustrated with a picture, print, drawing or other historical document from the FelixArchief. Some of these documents are, of course, maps. I will tell more about some of these maps in a couple of days.

The Brussels International Map Collectors’ Circle (BIMCC) celebrates its 10th anniversay this year. I would like to congratulate the Circle and its ‘founding father’ Wulf Bodenstein, who decided to retire form the chair of President. I retain very good memories of the several BIMCC activities and the warm-hearted meetings with Wulf. Ad multos annos… 

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary, a special issue of the BIMCC Newsletter was published, containing numerous photos, but also an exhaustive table of contents of BIMCC Newsletters 1-30 (1998-2008).

At the very last moment, and only by mere coincidence, I heard about the international colloquium Current Issues in Early Modern Cosmography (Ghent and Leuven, 28-30 May 2008).

The final programme looks very interesting, with a fine selection of prominent speakers.

It was a local announcement about a Gemma Frisius exhibition (Leuven, 29 May – 10 July 2008) which brought me on the track of the colloquium. Although I used to work at the University Library in Leuven until April 2007 - where I used to organise several cartographical exhibitions - this new exhibition was not yet brought to my attention. A couple of telephone calls unlocked the mystery.

Nevertheless, I will attend the colloquium and visit the exhibition in Leuven on Thursday 29 April.

Third International Workshop
Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage
Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain 26 – 27 June 2008

Organized by the ICA Commission on Digital Technologies in Cartographic Heritage and the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya.

This Workshop is addressed to scholars, researchers, map curators, map collectors, administrators, digital industry / market operators, and students coming from different cultural and educational backgrounds (humanistic, scientific and engineering) whose work is either focused on or affined to cartographic heritage. The Work­shop will offer a common ground to colleagues from various disciplines and practice where they can meet, interact and exchange knowledge, experience, plans and ideas on how the digital revolution and modern information and communication technologies in general can or could be used and contribute to cartographic heritage in terms of acquisition, processing visualization and communication of relevant digital data.

The Future of the Map Library and the Map Librarian

In 2008 the 16th Conference of the LIBER Groupe des Cartothécaires will take place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conference is organized by the libraries of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Vrije Universiteit (VU University) and Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR), the Amsterdam City Archives (SAA, the main conference venue) and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).

LIBER = Ligue des bibliothèques européennes de recherche / Association of European Research Libraries

LIBER GdC = Groupe des cartothécaires de LIBER  [LIBER Map Librarians Group]

Enjoy this pretty impressive touch-screen map interface, produced by Perceptive Pixel.

Small article in this morning’s Metro: “They want to abolish Britain!”
Anti-European British tabloids revealed secret plans from “Brussels” to split up Great-Britain.

First, I tought this was a joke. But then I found the article in The Sun (23 April 2008): Up the pole: EU to carve up UK. The map shown here illustrates the article.

As might have been expected (but I only found out after I had written this), this news was also picked up by others, such as the unequalled blog Strange Maps.

The Telegraph reports on April 14th, 2008: “The hunt for Wally kept a generation of children entertained on rainy days. [...] But now a Canadian artist has brought the game into the 21st Century, by painting an enormous Wally that can be seen by Google Earth satellites.”

Melanie Coles (22), an art student who publicised the project on her blog, is encouraging others to follow her lead and create a network of Google Earth Wallys across the world.

PS: Wally is known as ‘Waldo’ in the USA and as ‘Charlie’ in France.

On the cover of the May 2008 issue of Vanity Fair, Madonna holds an enormous globe behind her back.

That reminds me of the famous scene in Charlie Chaplin’s movie The Great Dictator (1940), where dictator Hynkel “plays” with a gigantic inflatable globe.

The Markiezenhof (Historisch Centrum, Bergen op Zoom, NL) and the Gemeentearchief Roosendaal (NL) present the exhibition West-Brabant à la carte: drie generaties landmeters Adan. Original maps of the Adan family of surveyors can be seen both in the Markiezenhof and in the Museum Tongerlohuys (Roosendaal). The exhibition opened on December 15th, 2007 and runs until June 15th, 2008. So, still plenty of time to go and watch these 18th and 19th century maps. The Adan family produced about 1200 maps over a period of some 160 years (1711-1878).

Drie generaties Adan, by Martijn Storms is a scientific accountable reference book and a standard work about the cartographic heritance of the Adan family, which was published on the occasion of the double exhibition.
Drie generaties Adan: West-Brabantse landmeters in de 18e en 19e eeuw / Martijn Storms. ‘t Goy-Houten, Hes & De Graaf, 2007, 284 p. ISBN 978 90 6194 040 1