Cartographies of Time
June 25, 2011 - September 18, 2011
How do you map time? Is history linear? The exhibition Cartographies of Time will explore graphic representations of European and American history, and the evolution of the modern timeline, through a selection of twenty-seven rarely seen books, manuscripts, charts, and other ingenious devices, drawn primarily from the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections of the Princeton University Library.
The timeline is a metaphor so fundamental to the visual representation of time today—in almanacs, calendars, charts, and graphs—that it can be difficult to recall that a linear concept of time was “invented” at all. Cartographies of Time follows the mapping of biblical and secular histories, beginning with a medieval scroll listing the kings of France and England and an early sixteenth century edition of the Chronicle of Eusebius—the fourth-century Christian theologian whose tables of biblical and historical time were among the first printed books. The exhibition continues through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the elaborate didactic chronologies and educational games of the nineteenth century.
Among the works in the exhibition will be the Astronomicum Caesareum, a magnificent volume explaining the celestial motions of the planets, moon, and sun with elaborately cut and hand-colored revolving paper discs. Published by the astronomer Petrus Apianus in 1540, the book could be used to compute the dates of historic events based on astronomical tables and charts. Also included will be Joseph Priestley’s A Chart of Biography (1765), perhaps the most important timeline to be developed in the eighteenth century, recording the lives of over two thousand famous men; and an English translation of the Strom der Zeiten (Stream of Time), an elegant chart first published by the Austrian chronologer Fredrich Strass in 1804, representing the progression of world history as a confluence of flowing rivers.
Guest-curated by Daniel Rosenberg, associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, and Anthony T. Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, the exhibition celebrates the recent publication of their book Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline, published by Princeton Architectural Press. This exhibition is part of Memory and the Work of Art, a yearlong collaborative investigation into the arts and cultural memory, organized by arts and cultural organizations at Princeton University and in the Princeton community.
The timeline is a metaphor so fundamental to the visual representation of time today—in almanacs, calendars, charts, and graphs—that it can be difficult to recall that a linear concept of time was “invented” at all. Cartographies of Time follows the mapping of biblical and secular histories, beginning with a medieval scroll listing the kings of France and England and an early sixteenth century edition of the Chronicle of Eusebius—the fourth-century Christian theologian whose tables of biblical and historical time were among the first printed books. The exhibition continues through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the elaborate didactic chronologies and educational games of the nineteenth century.
Among the works in the exhibition will be the Astronomicum Caesareum, a magnificent volume explaining the celestial motions of the planets, moon, and sun with elaborately cut and hand-colored revolving paper discs. Published by the astronomer Petrus Apianus in 1540, the book could be used to compute the dates of historic events based on astronomical tables and charts. Also included will be Joseph Priestley’s A Chart of Biography (1765), perhaps the most important timeline to be developed in the eighteenth century, recording the lives of over two thousand famous men; and an English translation of the Strom der Zeiten (Stream of Time), an elegant chart first published by the Austrian chronologer Fredrich Strass in 1804, representing the progression of world history as a confluence of flowing rivers.
Guest-curated by Daniel Rosenberg, associate professor of history at the University of Oregon, and Anthony T. Grafton, the Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, the exhibition celebrates the recent publication of their book Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline, published by Princeton Architectural Press. This exhibition is part of Memory and the Work of Art, a yearlong collaborative investigation into the arts and cultural memory, organized by arts and cultural organizations at Princeton University and in the Princeton community.
