
10.00am-5.00pm
From the world’s great maps collections come the charts that inspired the European idea of Australia, from ancient and medieval notions of a great south land to Matthew Flinders’ 1814 map of the continent. Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia brings together over 100 spectacular maps, atlases, globes and scientific instruments from the National Library of Australia and Australian and international lenders, including the British Library, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, the Vatican Library, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. This once-in-a-lifetime exhibition coincides with both the centenary of Canberra in 2013 and the bicentenary of Flinders’ chart in 2014. A celebration of some of the world’s most significant discoveries, Mapping Our World is also a re-evaluation of Australia’s mapping past, with unique works by the most eminent names in the history of cartography including Ptolemy, Gerard Mercator, the Blaeu family, Abraham Ortelius, Vincenzo Coronelli, Louis de Freycinet, James Cook and Matthew Flinders.
Opening in the ancient world, the exhibition explores conceptions of the Earth and the heavens. Indigenous Australian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman and Ptolemaic antecedents anchor the exhibition in the early traditions that first suggested a world beyond the Mediterranean. Exquisite examples of medieval mapping, both Christian and Islamic, give a sense of the complex and changing nature of maps at this time. The exhibition then explores Europe’s first great ocean-going voyages and the profound effect of Ptolemy’s ancient Geography, re-discovered in Europe after 1,000 years of obscurity.
Dutch mapping of the continent also features extensively in the exhibition, from the first contacts by the Dutch East India Company to the voyages of Abel Tasman and Willem de Vlamingh. Mapping Our World illustrates how voyaging to the Spice Islands created great wealth and power, allowing Dutch cartographers to slowly piece together the map of New Holland. The exhibition concludes with never-before-displayed hand-drawn maps created by James Cook, Louis de Freycinet and Matthew Flinders. Britain and France’s scientific and commercial rivalry fuelled a race to grasp the south Pacific from the late eighteenth century. Come and witness how their maps ultimately led to the first complete outline map of Australia.
