A Selection from Maurice M. Loewy and M. Pierre Puiseux’s Atlas “Photographique de la Lune,” circa 1900, is an exhibit of six vintage photos of the moon in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, Hatcher Lobby.
The photos are from a set of 82 published photogravures. These plates are from the first atlas of the moon printed on a large scale. Their aesthetic beauty belies the complex production process and scientific inquiry represented by these works.
The exhibit is part of the Hatcher Library’s Universe theme semester offerings. For more information go to www.lib.umich.edu/events/astronomy/.
Artistry of astronomical maps celebrated
The history of astronomical maps stretches from prehistory through the present, but the exhibit Divine Sky: The Artistry of Astronomical Maps, presented at www.lib.umich.edu/science/astro/maps/ by the Shapiro Science Library, focuses on the fertile period between 1600-1900 that produced some of astronomy’s greatest treasures.
This astronomical Golden Age was a time when the art of science and the science of art enjoyed a period of reciprocity. To revisit it is to be transported to a world where art and science seemed balanced and in each other’s service, where the universe seemed smaller, and where the skies were filled with familiar characters from myth and legend.
All of the items in this exhibit come from the collections of the U-M libraries. This is a permanent and growing exhibit; the materials represent a fraction of the astronomical maps in the library’s collections, and the intention is to add more as they are digitized.
