Week 30: Magnificent Maps/British Library

Hello bloggers long time no hear and it’s all my fault I’m afraid. Last week was the first time so far that I failed to write my cultural one a week and I haven’t even got a very good excuse. Deaths, holidays, drunkenness; nothing has stood in my blogging way until now – alas lethargy was, as always, my downfall and not only did I not write my blog last week but I didn’t even bother to do anything which is pretty damn awful and I can definitely feel my brain shrinking and cultural horizons narrowing. THIS WEEK however I managed to get off my arse and do something although rather ridiculously I didn’t check the closing times of the British Library and thought it closed an hour later than it in fact did so pretty much missed the second half of the exhibit OOPS.

Magnificent Maps; Power, Propaganda and Art is the current, FREE, show at the British Library and is in some form or another in partnership with the BBC. Now, being a Partnerships Coordinator in the department of the BBC that looks after this I REALLY should know more about the exact nature of this collaboration but, well, my knowledge, as ever, is limited. I do know that they have a BBC website devoted to the exhibition with lots of educational value. I know this, in depth, because it’s currently my job to research online teachers resources for the BBC, oh the glamour (I do get to do fun things sometimes as well), and in my now expert opinion I think this is an excellent site. Here’s the link, its quite fun to have a look round and a bit of an ‘interact’ but don’t look too in-depth as am about to cut and paste half the info into this blog:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/beautyofmaps/index.shtml

(By the way for those of you interested there are some uber interesting sites on BBC online which are little known to say the least and no doubt soon to be closed down so have a look while you can. This one in particular is excellent if you’re interested in wildlife which I am not but hear others misguidedly are: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wildlifefinder/)

Anyway, as the BBC and the BL are in cahoots my boss got sent an invite to the private view of this back in May or sometime and as she wasn’t around she kindly gave it to me.


CONTENT REMOVED DUE TO PARANOIA

Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, my timings left a little to be desired and missed half the exhibition which means I have now officially been to this show twice yet failed to really see most of it still. Oh well.

So, maps eh, good good, like a bit of old map, doesn’t everyone?? The curatorial concept behind this show seemed to hinge on the idea that historically different types of maps were hung in different parts of the home to fulfil different functions. They therefore divided the exhibition into different domestic spaces to display apparently vastly different types of map. So to begin with we had the long gallery, then the bed chamber, cabinet of curiosities, school room, reception room etc. Now, I think this idea would have worked better if you were some cartography expert and could immediately see the subtle differences in about 300 maps but I am not and therefore this design scheme seemed extremely flimsy and more than a little pointless, well not pointless I do see their point it just didn’t work. It was a bit like a 4am essay writing crisis when you suddenly realise that although your essay works ok and everything mostly fits into your theory it doesn’t stop it being absolute bollocks.

Most of the rooms and most of the maps seemed to fulfil the exact same function as each other which was pretty much (9 times out of 10) to show how rich, knowledgeable and powerful the owner was. No matter what room they were in. So, you can’t help thinking a lot of these maps were just really pretty/interesting/detailed and they wanted to include them for that reason rather than because they fitted into some over arching curatorial point. Which pretty much backs up my experience of all BL shows which is that they seem to often need a damn good edit.

Another point I’d like to make is that as far as I can tell they didn’t have audio guides and there was extremely little info provided on the captions for each map. Instead viewers were intended to use these strange tables in each room of the exhibition which had info and illustrations projected onto them and audio BOOMED out across the whole space in a REALLY off putting way. These tables were small and crowded even though the exhibition wasn’t THAT full so most people didn’t get to see it and instead had the distraction of random bits of disconnected info screeched at them from some unclear source or the inconvenience of not knowing much about the map they’re looking at –not good BL, not good at all although I admire you for trying and the interactive tables would have been fun if you were a kid.

So, pieces from the exhibition. Well lots of them were very very pretty. To be honest I haven’t got a HUGE amount to say about them other than that – oops. Gutiérrez map of the Americas from 1562 had cool sea monsters in it!!:



This MASSIVE one called Fra Mauro World Map is originally from about 1450 and is the oldest world map. Intended for display in Venice, it emphasises the feats of Marco Polo. The British East India Company commissioned the copy on display here, which apparently implies that Britain was heir to the Portuguese empire. It was displayed in the bed chamber for some reason I can’t remember/never fathomed and shows the globe upside down with the holy land at the centre, which has got to mean something important right?

Everyone seemed to go CRAZY over the Grayson Perry Map of Nowhere which was beautifully executed but like everything he does; a lot less meaningful, insightful and funny than he thinks it is:

Some of the maps I really enjoyed were ones which included family trees on them as I think it’s pretty cool to map time as well as space on one image. Examples of these include this great one showing the kingdom James I was to inherit along with his justification, through family tree, of why it was his to rightfully claim. Annoyingly have just spent a good 25 mins looking for this online to no avail – but it’s great!

A quite amusing part of the exhibition had the worlds largest Atlas displayed near the worlds smallest!!:

The largest is The Klencke atlas from 1660 which was produced as a ‘summary of the worlds knowledge’, for the exclusive appreciation of Charles II. The smallest atlas in the world was made by special request for the dolls house of Queen Mary, the one on show still at Windsor Palace and contains like 8 fully detailed maps and is very sweet. Also on display in that room (the cabinet of curiosities room or whatever it was called) were some delightful pocket globes which were apparently all her rage at one point and highly desirable still, would LOVE one of these:

After this I only had 20 minutes to finish the exhibition, get to the shop and pick up my stuff from a locker so sadly I missed the rest but did very much enjoy the small section on maps in poster art including these:

The second being a satirical comment from the 1870s about Russia’s political potency, or something. Anyway haven’t got time to do anymore but all in all this was a nice exhibition with some resounding flaws but beautiful workmanship for a couple of hours quiet contemplation.