Ballerinas, Butterflies, and Bucky Balls: Three Architects Redesign the World Map for the Modern Age (Conversations on Cartography Series)
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Ballerinas, Butterflies, and Bucky Balls: Three Architects Redesign the World Map for the Modern Age (Conversations on Cartography Series)
Featuring Matthew H. Edney, Osher Professor in the History of Cartography, University of Southern Maine, and director of the History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin–Madison; with Arthur Dunkelman, curator, Jay I. Kislak Collection.
Featuring Matthew H. Edney, Osher Professor in the History of Cartography, University of Southern Maine, and director of the History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin–Madison; with Arthur Dunkelman, curator, Jay I. Kislak Collection.
Thursday, May 4, 2023, 1 p.m. (EDT)
Matthew H. Edney discusses how 20th-century modernism gave rise to many paradoxes and antagonisms, among them a repeated challenge to the "scientific" map.
Modernism promoted the expectation that maps are properly scientific works that contribute to the continual remaking of modern, progressive civilization. This ethos perpetuated a conception of the world that was already dominated by Gerardus Mercator's famous map projection. Yet, the modernist impulse to reshape all aspects of human life led some people to challenge that map, and its excessive poleward distortions, through the application of new design to ensure effective communication. Mercator's projection had been perfect for the 19th-century era of maritime empires; now, a different view was needed for the new age of global connectivity promised by the airplane.
The challenge was taken up by three architects. Trained to creatively design functional spaces, each remapped the world as a series of interconnected landmasses rather than as continents separated by oceans. Bernard Cahill reconstructed the world though his Butterfly Projection (1909). Working for Fortune magazine, Richard Edes Harrison used a circular world map (1936), whose construction he explained by means of a twirling ballerina. And, R. Buckminster Fuller adapted his "dymaxion" construct, nicknamed the Bucky Ball, to make a geometrically angular world (1943).
The manner in which these three architects self-consciously rejected the time-honored designs of geographers and cartographers indicates how the idea of "map" and its supposedly scientific nature has long been contested. Their challenge was not as dramatic as that of the Cubist and Situationist reconfigurations of space, because the architects continued to refer to the depiction of geographical space now enhanced by their creative aesthetic. In other words, the three architects require a much more relaxed attitude to the nature of maps and cartography than modernism otherwise seems to promote.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Matthew H. Edney is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. He also directs the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he edited, with Mary Pedley, "Volume Four: Cartography in the European Enlightenment" (2019). A student of imperial mapping in early British India ("Mapping an Empire" (1997)) and colonial North America, he is broadly interested in mapping and power relations. His most recent book is "Cartography: The Ideal and Its History" (Chicago, 2019). Read more »
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Prior to joining the University of Miami Libraries as the Curator of the Kislak Collection, Arthur Dunkelman served as Director and Curator of the Jay I. Kislak Foundation for 24 years. In 2004 a portion of the Kislak Foundation Collection was donated to the Library of Congress; Dunkelman was responsible for managing the transition and establishing research and public outreach programs. Two exhibitions, "Treasures of the Jay I. Kislak Collection" (2005) and "Exploring the Americas" (2007 to present), highlighted the materials and brought them to national and international attention. He also edited a comprehensive catalog of the collection, published by the Library of Congress. Read more »
Matthew H. Edney discusses how 20th-century modernism gave rise to many paradoxes and antagonisms, among them a repeated challenge to the "scientific" map.
Modernism promoted the expectation that maps are properly scientific works that contribute to the continual remaking of modern, progressive civilization. This ethos perpetuated a conception of the world that was already dominated by Gerardus Mercator's famous map projection. Yet, the modernist impulse to reshape all aspects of human life led some people to challenge that map, and its excessive poleward distortions, through the application of new design to ensure effective communication. Mercator's projection had been perfect for the 19th-century era of maritime empires; now, a different view was needed for the new age of global connectivity promised by the airplane.
The challenge was taken up by three architects. Trained to creatively design functional spaces, each remapped the world as a series of interconnected landmasses rather than as continents separated by oceans. Bernard Cahill reconstructed the world though his Butterfly Projection (1909). Working for Fortune magazine, Richard Edes Harrison used a circular world map (1936), whose construction he explained by means of a twirling ballerina. And, R. Buckminster Fuller adapted his "dymaxion" construct, nicknamed the Bucky Ball, to make a geometrically angular world (1943).
The manner in which these three architects self-consciously rejected the time-honored designs of geographers and cartographers indicates how the idea of "map" and its supposedly scientific nature has long been contested. Their challenge was not as dramatic as that of the Cubist and Situationist reconfigurations of space, because the architects continued to refer to the depiction of geographical space now enhanced by their creative aesthetic. In other words, the three architects require a much more relaxed attitude to the nature of maps and cartography than modernism otherwise seems to promote.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER
Matthew H. Edney is Osher Professor in the History of Cartography at the University of Southern Maine. He also directs the History of Cartography Project at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, for which he edited, with Mary Pedley, "Volume Four: Cartography in the European Enlightenment" (2019). A student of imperial mapping in early British India ("Mapping an Empire" (1997)) and colonial North America, he is broadly interested in mapping and power relations. His most recent book is "Cartography: The Ideal and Its History" (Chicago, 2019). Read more »
ABOUT THE MODERATOR
Prior to joining the University of Miami Libraries as the Curator of the Kislak Collection, Arthur Dunkelman served as Director and Curator of the Jay I. Kislak Foundation for 24 years. In 2004 a portion of the Kislak Foundation Collection was donated to the Library of Congress; Dunkelman was responsible for managing the transition and establishing research and public outreach programs. Two exhibitions, "Treasures of the Jay I. Kislak Collection" (2005) and "Exploring the Americas" (2007 to present), highlighted the materials and brought them to national and international attention. He also edited a comprehensive catalog of the collection, published by the Library of Congress. Read more »
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