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Celestial Images:
Antiquarian Astronomical Charts and
Maps from the Mendillo Collection
SU Art Galleries
Syracuse University
Shaffer Hall, Main Campus
Syracuse, New York 13244
January 16 – March 4, 2007
Andromede, Persee, le Triangle, c1830
Exhibition Displays Over 80 Antiquarian Star Charts
Celestial Images celebrates the Golden Age of astronomical charts. Some of the world’s earliest artistic images, illustrations of cosmologies and heavenly phenomena, entered into a new and lively phase during the Renaissance. The invention of printing in the fifteenth century improved the means of disseminating scientific knowledge; advances in astronomy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries led to the portrayal of new information. This fortuitous conjunction created printed astronomical charts of surprising accuracy and delicate beauty. Celestial cartographers combined their scientific quest with a keen aesthetic sense—each chart had to be an object of beauty, as well as a repository of information. These charts were a celebration of aesthetics as well as scientific knowledge.
Like the twins of Gemini, art and science walked hand-in-hand for over hundred years. By the late nineteenth century, this unified way of seeing had split into the “two cultures” of art and science that we know today. Overwhelmed by a vast amount of data, astronomical charts of the twentieth century eventually changed into functional, unadorned tools intended for the specialists.
Tucked away in libraries, museums and private collections, however, are splendid remnants of a bygone era. Assembled here from the Mendillo Collection of Antiquarian Astronomical Charts and Maps are over eighty examples of some of the finest celestial cartography created. There are star charts (maps of the constellations and the full celestial sphere), charts of planetary systems (cosmologies), and a smaller third category, charts of celestial phenomena (such as nebulae, comets, and eclipses). Together, they pay homage to a time when simple systems explained the universe and humankind held friendly commerce with the skies.
The exhibition was supported, in part, by the 2006 Syracuse Symposium on “imagination,” an intellectual and artistic festival hosted by College of Arts and Sciences for the entire Syracuse community.
Weekend and evening Galleries visitors can park in the Q4 lot on College Place. Notify the attendant that you are visiting the Galleries and you will be directed where to park. Parking is on a space available basis and may be restricted during events held at the Carrier Dome. If spaces aren't available the attendant will direct you to the nearest lot.
Press Contact:
David Prince
e-mail: dlprince@syr.edu
phone: 315.443.4097
