Astrolabes & Armillary Spheres: Scientific Instruments in the Renaissance

Register for the event here.
 
During the Renaissance, the development of new scientific tools and their promotion through print media altered navigation, inspired exploration, and enabled European colonialism.
 
In this virtual conversation, Renaissance print scholar Susan Dackerman (Stanford University) and historian of science Pedro Raposo (Adler Planetarium) will discuss the workings of early modern scientific instruments and their depiction on paper. Our new exhibition on Renaissance invention features sixteenth and seventeenth-century loans from the Adler Planetarium including an intricate German clock, a shipwrecked Portuguese mariner's astrolabe, and a movable model of the Ptolemaic cosmos known as an armillary sphere.
 
About the Speakers:
 
Susan Dackerman is the John and Jill Freidenrich Director of the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. She has curated many exhibitions, including the interdisciplinary international loan exhibition Prints in the Pursuit of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (2011) at the Harvard Art Museums and the groundbreaking Baltimore Museum of Art exhibition Painted Prints: The Revelation of Color in Northern Renaissance and Baroque Engravings, Etchings, and Woodcuts (2002). She holds a PhD in the history of art from Bryn Mawr College.
 
Pedro M. P. Raposo is a historian of science and Curator and Director of Collections at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, where he oversees a world-class collection of astronomical instruments, prints, and rare books. He holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford.
 
This event is sponsored by the Kress Foundation, and is being held in conjunction with the Newberry’s fall exhibition, Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta.