Constellations exhibition launch and guided tour with Historian of Science Simon Schaffer
Launch of Constellations: Reimagining Celestial Histories in the Early Americas
To launch the Library's exploration of early American astronomy, join guest curators Thomás Haddad (Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil) and Nydia Pineda (University of California, San Diego) as they present a guided tour of their new exhibition with Professor Simon Schaffer, Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Director & Librarian Neil Safier will moderate the conversation and the question-and-answer period to follow.
About the exhibition:
If the library is the cosmos, and books are the stars that fill it, then readers are celestial observers. Like ancient astronomers gazing at the sky, early modern readers created constellations with their ideas – as we do today. With curators Thomas Haddad and Nydia Pineda as our starry messengers, the John Carter Brown Library presents Constellations: Reimagining Celestial Histories in the Early Americas with nearly 90 books, maps, and prints from the JCB’s collection. Both a history of the early American heavens and a study of those communities who interpreted the firmament above them, the exhibition takes as its premise the idea that books in a library collection, like constellations, can acquire meaning through unexpected groupings, unstable connections that testify to the distinct meanings that the heavens revealed in the Americas, for the Americas, and from the Americas.
Please, register in advance for this event:
https://brown.zoom.us/meeting/
The event will be streamed live on JCB Library's Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/
You can also follow this event live on Youtube:
https://youtu.be/94HjwmnOfTU