Sixth Biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography
Friday, October 3, 2008
"Revisualizing Westward Expansion: A Century of Conflict, 1800-1900" is the theme for the Sixth Biennial Virginia Garrett Lectures on the History of Cartography. The October 3, 2008, meeting, on the sixth floor of UT Arlington's Central Library, will begin at 10am and is the anchor event for several days of map society meetings. Focusing on maps and their role in the opening of the American West, the talks will examine the practice of making maps to report the placement of roads, railroads, Indian lands, and wars as they happened. A list of this year's presenters can be found here.
In addition to the Virginia Garrett Lectures, the Texas Map Society and the Philip Lee Phillips Society will be meeting together at UT Arlington on Saturday, October 4th, and the Society for the History of Discoveries will meet at the University on Sunday, October 5th – Tuesday, October 7th. Members of the Council of North American Map Societies will also be meeting at UT Arlington during these dates.
The Amon Carter Museum’s map exhibit opens June 28th and will continue until October 31st. On display will be several fine maps from UT Arlington’s Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library. The maps span the century, from Aaron Arrowsmith’s great 1796 Map of the United States of North America, with “Additions to 1802” to a colorful 1902 chromolithographed map showing not only the American West but also territories acquired by the U.S. in the Spanish-American War of 1898. Among the rarest of these gems is a large map of Mexico drawn by John H. Robinson, a medical doctor who accompanied Zebulon Pike’s famous and ill-fated western expedition in 1806-1807.
An exhibit of maps at UT Arlington’s Special Collections on the same theme opens August 25th and runs through December 20th. This exhibit will include numerous impressive smaller maps from the library’s collection as well as some significant maps generously loaned by the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University.