Colour Meets MapNew MARKK exhibition explores 500 years of cartography

23 August 2021, by Webmaster

Photo: MARKK Hamburg & Hanseatic Business Foundation Archive

Starting this week, the Museum am Rothenbaum is showing the exhibition ‘Colour Meets Map’. It is based on three years of research in which scientists of the CSMC were significantly involved.

Maps do not merely show a miniature reprsentation of the world – rather, they are a means of expressing worldviews. Their designs reveal claims of ownership, make political judgments, evaluate economic relations, and intentionally direct their viewer’s eye. Colours play a decisive role in this; they enable and reinforce the messages that cartographers want to convey. 

The exhibition ‘Coulor Meets Map’, which opens on 26 August at the Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Künste der Welt (MARKK) and is accessible to the public from the 27th, presents an impressive collection of European and East Asian maps spanning a period from the 15th to the 20th century. It runs until 30 January 2022.

The exhibition is the result and culmination of a three-year research project, funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, in which Oliver Hahn, Jochen Schlüter, and Peter Zietlow from CSMC realised the material science part. In addition to the CSMC, the Centrum für Naturkunde (CeNak) was also involved in the research.