I spent a very good four hours at the Walters Art Museum (my normal museum limit is two) and could have spent even more time there if I had more stamina and fewer sleeping family members to consider. I could spend another four hours gushing about how great it was but I like to try and keep these entries manageable. If you want a really good, comprehensive review of the Maps: Finding Our Place in the World exhibit check out the Pond Seeker - his review is from the Chicago exhibit so it won't be identical but most of those maps are at the Walters also.I will give a quick look at the highlights in this post and then maybe revisit the exhibit and other festival notes in a future post.
Logistics note: We drove down from Philly for the day-if I had it to do again I would have stayed overnight so I could have spent more time at the Walters and seen more of the satellite exhibits and events.
My favorite things from the exhibit were the more
non-traditional maps, particularly this thing that looks like a back scratcher but is really an Inuit map of the coast of Greenland. Travel down the right side and you head south down the coast-as you go back up the left side you are heading further south. The shapes of the inlets are shown, but also the slope of the coastline is represented by the slopes on the wood so they had an idea of the coastal topography. Pretty clever-and we think they're primitive!
On the left is what is considered to be the "earliest known map drawn to scale" from Nippur, Babylonia - I had to steal this image from the Book of Joe - the blogging anesthesiologist. Thanks Joe!There's so much more to say and show but it's very late so I will highlight more stuff when my mind is fresh!
Remember you only have until June 8th to see all this great stuff so hurry down to Bawlmor!
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