• DOI:10.1017/S0305741000011346
• Corpus ID: 154338508

Chinese Maps: An Exhibition at the British Library

@article{Nelson1974ChineseMA,
  title={Chinese Maps: An Exhibition at the British Library},
  author={Howard Nelson},
  journal={The China Quarterly},
  year={1974},
  volume={58},
  pages={357 - 362}
}

• H. Nelson
• Published 1 June 1974
• Art
• The China Quarterly

The Map Room and the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books of the British Library (formerly part of the British Museum) have recently mounted a special exhibition of Chinese and Japanese maps.1 The opportunity has been provided by a most generous loan from a private collector, by the availability of the new oriental gallery at the Museum, and by the interest of several members of the staff. Intended originally to redress the balance of a series of exhibitions devoted primarily to the cartographic and astronomical achievements of the western world, this exhibition has been a revelation of the wealth of Far Eastern cartographic material available in this country (a wealth that is paralleled by the valuable collections recently explored in the Bibliothbque Nationale 2), and it has demonstrated the importance for other disciplines, as well as the intrinsic interest, of the history of map-making in China and Japan. The exhibition began on 1 February with two separate displays; in the middle of March, the Chinese section in the oriental gallery was dismantled, and certain selected items added to the Japanese section at the North Entrance, where the combined (though reduced) exhibition will continue until the end of 1974. What follows is devoted