Heading West/Touring West: Mapmakers, Performing Artists, and the American Frontier - Softcover

Hudson, Alice C.; Cohen-Stratyner, Barbara Naomi; New York Public Library

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087104451X ISBN 13: 9780871044518

Publisher: New York Public Library, 2001

Synopsis

Heading West/Touring West tells the story of the country's relentless march westward the eyes of the mapmakers who captured the lay of the land on paper and of the performing artists who brought entertainment and information to the newly mapped territories.Moving in time from Sebastian Münster's 1540 map of North and South America, showing a hoped-for (but imaginary) waterway from Europe to Asia, to the findings of the Lewis and Clark Expedition and many other government-sponsored military and scientific surveys, to maps of the railroad routes that brought order to the frontier, Heading West / Touring West documents the routes of westward expansion, but also reveals much about the people and the land -- the patterns of displacement of Native Americans, the frantic search for gold, and the attractions of new tourist destinations such as Yellowstone National Park. Popular entertainment in the 19th century comes to life here through broadsides, advertisements, prompt books, and photographs from a wide variety of performing arts -- frontier melodramas, Italian opera, the plays of Shakespeare, and Abolitionist song books.

Includes 60 black and white illustrations and 10 color plates.

About this title

About the Author:

Alice Hudson has been Chief of the Map Division of The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library since 1981. She is active in the New York Map Society and administers the activities of the Library's Mercator Society. Her reviews and articles have appeared in such publications as the American Book Collector, the Western Association of Map Libraries Information Bulletin, the Map Collector, and Meridian. Her work on some 200 pre-twentieth century women in cartography will be published in the Fall 2001 issue of Cartographica.

Barbara Cohen-Stratyner is the Curator of Exhibitions for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, for which she has curated over 40 exhibits. She is the author of Ned Wayburn and the Development of the Routine Structure (published by Weslyan University Press' Studies in Dance History imprint 1988), and has written and edited several reference books on the arts. She holds a Smithsonian Institution Fellowship for 2000-2001, co-sponsored by the Centers for Museum Practice and for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

About this edition

• Publisher: New York Public Library
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 087104451X
• ISBN 13: 9780871044518
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80