Exhibits
GIS Day 2019
By Lauren Maddox
It’s that time of year again– happy GIS Day 2019! Well, actually, GIS Day will be tomorrow, Wednesday November 20th. UWM will be celebrating the global event with their own GIS Day program. GIS Day is an opportunity for those of us who are interested in learning about geography and GIS technology to come together with a community of other GIS learners and explore GIS. Anyone interested is encouraged to register for the day’s program and the workshops they would like to attend for GIS Day 2019! Workshops and tours of the AGSL will be offered throughout the day from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Keynote speaker Dr. Ryan Covington will be giving a talk about “Navigating Geospatial Technology in 2020 and Beyond” over lunch. A complete program of events is available at GIS Day’s UWM webpage. We hope you will join us in celebrating GIS Day this year!
October Pop-up Exhibit
By Lauren Maddox
Happy Halloween! This month, the AGSL, UWM Archives, and Special Collections collaborated on another Pop-Up Exhibit! The official exhibit ran from October 23rd-25th and included specially curated pieces such as wood engravings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Barry Moser and many more spooky, scary artifacts! Well, you may have missed the full Pop-up Exhibit but don’t despair! There’s still time to see the hair-raising picks put out by the AGSL for the pop-up– our exhibition materials will stay on display until after Halloween! Peruse our collection; you may find sea monsters, witches, and haunted cemeteries– and if that doesn’t scare you, stay tuned for next week’s post which will feature some of the most spine-chilling, blood-curdling maps from this month’s Pop-Up!
The AGSL is open to the public Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Come see us and the Halloween Pop-up Exhibit while you still can!
In Case You Missed Us: The National Hispanic Heritage Month Pop-Up Exhibit
By Lauren Maddox
Last month, I wrote about our then-upcoming Pop-Up Exhibit in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month. The exhibit was a collaborative project in conjunction with the UWM Archives to showcase some of our collections and honor this very special month. As we move into October, we will be putting up another exciting exhibit (stay tuned for more on that later!), but in case you missed this pop-up, here are some of the digital versions of pieces we featured in the exhibit:
Map of San Juan Ulua Island in 1628. 
“The Routes of the Flying Clipper Ships,” 1930s. Click the links to see these maps in our Digital Collections! 
Map of San Juan Ulua Island in 1628. 
Fascimile of 1468 World Map, previously owned by the Hispanic Society of America.
And some photos of the exhibit live and in-person:
Stay tuned for more updates about future exhibits!
Hispanic Heritage Month: A Special Pop-Up Exhibit
By Lauren Maddox
This past Sunday marked the beginning of National Hispanic Heritage Month. This month is a celebration of Hispanic Americans who, according to the National Hispanic Heritage Month website, “have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.” The tradition of a National Hispanic Heritage Month began in 1968, when Representative Edward R. Roybal sponsored legislation that would establish a National Hispanic Heritage Week. The holiday week was signed into effect under Lyndon B. Johnson and then expanded to a month-long period during Reagan’s presidency in 1988. The original start date, September 15th, was chosen to celebrate the official independence days of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua declared in 1821. The original week also encompassed Mexico, Belize, and Chile’s independence days. Now the month-long observance, celebrated from September 15th-October 15th, includes all of these days as well as Dia de la Raza.
In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, many organizations including the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, and the National Park Service are hosting events throughout September and October. Throughout the month, there will be a Community Day, a Hispanic Heritage Month Concert with Inca Son, a book talk with Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, and a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon and more. And in addition to the live events, many digital archive collections are being made public this month– the National Hispanic Heritage Month website includes a list of all related exhibits and collections here. Some highlights from this list: the Library of Congress’s Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Latino Art supported and hosted by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and many, many others.
But these aren’t the only ways to celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month! This week from September 25-27th, the AGSL and UWM Archives are collaborating on a pop-up exhibit featuring curated pieces from both libraries’ collections. The exhibit will span both of our libraries: materials from the Archives will be on display on the second floor and maps from our collections will be exhibited in the AGSL. We are especially excited to showcase the Tira de Santa Catarina Ixtepeji scroll. Please, come celebrate this historic month with us! And enjoy a preview of some of the maps included in the exhibit:
Map of San Juan Ulua Island in 1628. Fascimile of 1468 World Map, previously owned by the Hispanic Society of America. Map of Acapulco in 1628. “The Routes of the Flying Clipper Ships,” 1930s. Click the links to see these maps in our Digital Collections!
The AGSL is open from 8:30-4:30 Monday-Friday! We will also be participating in Milwaukee Open Doors this weekend on September 28th from 10-5! Please stop by and see us!
Freshwater People: An Exhibit on Lake Tourism by Georgia Brown
By Lauren Maddox
This week, the AGSL is unveiling a new featured exhibit designed by Graduate Student Intern Georgia Brown. This exhibit, which is focused on freshwater tourism and recreation, features a selection of pieces from our collections including postcards, maps, and rare, vintage travel books.
Brown has been a Graduate Student Intern with the AGSL since May 2018 (you might remember her from last month’s feature!) The exhibit is part of a final project for Brown’s Independent Study with the AGSL’s curator Marcy Bidney, which focused on cartographic resources in libraries.
Here are few photos from the Freshwater People: An Exhibit on Freshwater Tourism:
This exhibit is available and open to the public now! We encourage you to come see it in person– and enjoy the rest of the AGSL’s collections while you’re here! The AGSL is open Monday-Friday, 8:00-4:30. Please come and see us!
Visualizing the Moon Exhibit 2019
The latest exhibit is entitled: “Visualizing the Moon.” It features lunar maps, atlases, books, globes, and photographs. This is in conjunction with Marcy Bidney’s presentation on “Imagining the Moon: A History of Lunar Visualizations,” which was rescheduled for April 3, and is co-sponsored by the UWM Planetarium as part of their event series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon Landing. The exhibit will be up through April 19.
18th Century Missional Maps in the Amazon Basin Exhibit at the AGS Library
April 26th was the Maps & America lecture sponsored by Arthur and Jan Holzheimer. The speaker was Dr. Carme Montaner, Head, Unitat Cartoteca de Catalunya, Institut Cartogràfic i Geològic de Catalunya, Barcelona. Her talk “18th Century Missional Maps in the Amazon Basin: The Case of Ocapa Monastery in Peru” was accompanied by an exhibit of materials from the AGS Library as curated by Jovanka Ristic.
Here are photos from the exhibit. Click on any image to open a larger view.
Posted by Angie Cope
American Geographical Society Library 