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Category: Maps

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Guest Blog: For Love, War, and Tribute: Featherwork in the Early Americas

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Giselle Aviles, the 2019 Archaeological Research Associate in the Geography and Map Division, is delving into the treasures of the William and Inger Ginsberg Collection of Pre-Columbian Textiles and the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the History and Archaeology of the Early Americas. Aviles is undertaking an ethnographic analysis of Andean textiles and Mesoamerican ceramics, tracing and unfolding their stories. Here, she writes about feathers being used in ceremonial art in South American societies before the arrival of Europeans.

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Webinar Series: Discover the Library’s Ancient Mesoamerican Manuscripts

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

The Library of Congress holds three of fewer than 100 surviving Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts that predate 1600: the Huexotzinco Codex (1531), the Oztoticpac Lands Map (1540) and the newly acquired Codex Quetzalecatzin (1570–95). On three Wednesdays this spring, starting on March 14, John Hessler of the Library’s Geography and Map Division will host webinars exploring …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

EverydayLOC: New Year’s Resolutions

Posted by: Gayle Osterberg

Happy New Year! There is something sort of refreshing to me about saying those words. I have always fully embraced the notion that a new calendar year, psychologically speaking, offers a particular moment to reset, recommit and reprioritize. Whether you call them New Year’s Resolutions or, as one of my dear friends refers to them, …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Acquisition: Extremely Rare Mesoamerican Manuscript

Posted by: Benny Seda-Galarza

The Codex Quetzalecatzin, an extremely rare Mesoamerican manuscript acquired by the Library’s Geography and Map Division, explores the extent, the people and the history of northern Oaxaca and Southern Puebla in Mexico. Held in private collections for more than 100 years, the codex has been digitally preserved by the Library and made available to the public online for …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Online: Mapping the U.S., Block by Block

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Located midway between Tucson and Phoenix, Casa Grande, Arizona, now has a population of about 50,000, making it fairly small by today’s standards for cities. But it’s a lot bigger than it used to be. In 1898, only 200 people lived alongside the Southern Pacific railroad tracks there. Besides scattered dwellings, Casa Grande had a …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Gallery Talk: The Libertine Life of Abel Buell

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Kimberli Curry, exhibition director in the Interpretive Programs Office. Library of Congress specialists often give presentations about ongoing Library exhibitions. We are pleased to introduce a new blog series, “Galley Talks,” featuring content from these presentations. This first post relates to the exhibition “Mapping a New Nation: Abel Buell’s Map of …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

New Book: “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps”

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

Designed to educate, amuse or advertise, pictorial maps were a clever and colorful component of print culture in the mid-20th century, often overlooked in studies of cartography. A new book published by the Library of Congress in association with the University of Chicago Press, “Picturing America: The Golden Age of Pictorial Maps,” by Stephen J. …