Paulette Hasier, chief of the LIbrary's Geography and Map Division, is the ninth person and first woman to head the division since its creation in 1897. She talks about that work here.
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.
A little more than a year ago, Hurricane Harvey hit the Texas coast as a category 4 storm, bringing damaging rain and flooding. Less than a month later, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico with heavy downpours and sustained winds of 155 miles an hour – only two miles an hour shy of a category 5 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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. …